


I Don't Know What to Call It

by Tara_Moeller_69



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, M/M, Orphans, Revenge, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 13:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 34,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21459085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tara_Moeller_69/pseuds/Tara_Moeller_69
Summary: Gabriel and Beelzebub team up, albeit reluctantly, to enact sweet revenge on Aziraphale and Crowley, by making them young and taking away their memories--and handing them over to the Foster Care System... What better way to make them pay for averting the War than by making them live through the horrible teenage years of humans?
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Sergeant Shadwell/Madame Tracy (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	1. The Initial Plot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheAuthorGod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAuthorGod/gifts).

For an angel and a demon who thought angels and demons should not fraternize, Gabriel and Beelzebub were astonishingly good at meeting up without anyone—angel or demon or human—being any the wiser. Today’s meet up was at a corner pub in a small village that was nearly deserted. All the young people had moved away when the factory closed, looking for jobs and livelihoods elsewhere, leaving only the retired and a lone postman to inhabit the hamlet.

They sat in a corner booth, across from each other, leaning as far away from the other as possible.

Gabriel’s nose was wrinkled in a permanent scrunch.

Now these meet ups weren’t friendly. They were scheming—planning if you asked Gabriel, as scheming had an evil connotation as far as he was concerned—and Beelzebub rather liked the way the ruling archangel paled whenever they used the word.

Retribution—Gabriel and Beelzebub both liked that word—would be the end result of their meetings—or so they had determined.

“You got the paperwork donezzz?” Beelzebub asked, pale foam from their Guiness rimming his lips. They wiped it away with a damp, stained sleeve.

“It’s singular, the verb, and yes, it is done. All filled out, just as the Foster Care system requested.” Gabriel pulled the neatly folded sheaves from his inner jacker pocket.

“Very good. And I have the back storiezzz written out, too.” The demon pulled a tattered yellow piece of paper from his trouser pocket. “Here.”

Gabriel wrinkled his nose and poked the single piece of paper with the tip of a finger. “Why only one?”

“Why bother with two?” Beelzebub had gotten a headache writing down just the one. If the two weren’t going to be placed together—no Foster Care system ever placed two children who arrived into the system at the same time in the same household—there was no need to write two back stories. It was painful and a waste of time.

“I suppose.” Gabriel swallowed and picked up the sheet by a corner, letting the rest droop dirtily toward the wooden tabletop.

“Have you miracled away their memoriezzz yet?” Beelzebub leaned forward, eager to hear the news.

Gabriel shook his head. “No, not yet. We needed the new memories first.”

“We?” Beelzebub narrowed their gaze and bared their teeth in a sneer.

“It’s just the royal “we”—don’t worry, no one else is involved. I explained before, when we had our first meeting, no one else can know our plan.” Gabriel glanced around the empty pub, only the ancient barkeep—deaf and almost blind, wiping a dirty glass behind the counter—within any hearing distance. He checked the celestial channels, too—Michael was still pissed at having her cellphone confiscated for having “backchannels” and thus ignoring everyone and everything.

“Hmmm.” Beelzebub frowned, narrowing their gaze to mere slits. They didn’t trust Gabriel any more than they trusted the demons who worked under them in Hell. “I see.”

But they didn’t.

Gabriel nodded, miracling most of the dinge off the paper in his hand and placing it with the two Foster Care forms he’d carefully filled out.

He didn’t inform Beelzebub that he, too, didn’t think there was any reason to waste thinking power by doubling up when unnecessary.

One form was filled out for “Tony”—Beelzebub had insisted on not using the full “Anthony”, especially since Crowley hated the shortened version of the name. Though Gabriel didn’t understand why the demon had insisted—what did it matter since the offending demon wouldn’t remember that he had given himself the first name “Anthony” and hated the shortened version—“Smith”, date of birth 1 April 2003—also at the insistence of Beelzebub, who’d laughed hysterically. There were other information blocks, mostly filled with “unknown” as the whole point of being in Foster Care was that you didn’t have a mother, or a father, or an address.

The other form was filled out for “Zira Smythe”, with the same birth date and number of unknowns.

Gabriel was rather proud of the spark of imagination he’d been able to drum up to come up with a name for the angel that had no inkling of his celestial moniker. Though he trusted he’d be able to miracle away their memories, he was not truly certain that Aziraphale wouldn’t be able to break through and remember the truth.

One really couldn’t be sure of what an angel who could shoot fire from its mouth at you could do, in the end.

“Fine, then. So, we’ll check back in with each other in a week?”

“Let’s make it two.” Gabriel would never admit to Beelzebub that he was nervous about the miracling bit. He was out of practice. Wasn’t much reason to miracle in Heaven. He gave his angels orders and they obeyed—well, most of them anyway.

After all, that was why he’d decided to help Beelzebub with this plan. He needed to make Arizaphale pay. You couldn’t go around with a fire-breathing angel and expect other angels to just keep toeing the line. There was bound to be resistance, another rebellion, even.

He had to nip any germination of dissent now, and the best way to do it was to punish the offending angel.

Beelzebub lurked outside the Foster Care office, watching for the long, silver automobile that would bring the angel and demon to their final punishment: human teenage years in a Foster Care system that didn’t care anything about preparing them for adulthood. They’d done their research, or rather, they’d had Hastur do the research, in part as punishment for not reeling in Crowley two millennia ago, but also because the demon’s constant whimpering and whining about Crowley and how “that damned demon”—I mean, was there any other kind?—had ruined everything had gotten on their nerves.

They’d done their bit—de-aging their human bodies to match the fake birthdates on their forms—just before Gabriel had miracled away their memories.

It wasn’t that they didn’t trust Gabriel, but they didn’t trust him; they didn’t trust any angel.

Angels always did the “right” thing, never the wrong, and if one looked at this scenario from the right angle, it could be seen as wrong—and if Gabriel caught sight of that wrongness, he could change his mind. Angels were wont to do that, you know.

Now, Beelzebub didn’t expect Gabriel would make any changes in how they treated the demon Crowley. Angels didn’t care much about doing right by demons; after all, when the time had come for the fall, it was all pointing of fingers and declarations of “he questioned!” and God believed every pointing finger and lilting voice of betrayal.

Beelzebub relaxed when the car came ‘round the corner, slow, careful, and slowed to a stop exactly three inches from the curb, aligning perfectly with the lines for legal parking.

Two teenagers emerged from the back, followed by Gabriel from the front passenger side. No one sat in the driver seat, but the humans traversing the sidewalk and darting through the traffic in the street didn’t appear to notice. They expected there to be a driver in the driver seat, and so they didn’t see that there wasn’t one.

The two young men stood near the boot, reaching in to grab a duffle and a battered leather hard-sided case. The red head slung the duffle over one shoulder and adjusted his sunglasses, sneering at the human throng that veered around him. The other pushed loose blond curls out of his eyes and seemed to wish he could disappear into the pavement, holding his suitcase in front of him like a shield,

“Come on. I don’t have all day.” Gabriel opened the wide glass door and swept an arm toward the interior of the brick building.

The red head sauntered through; his black skinny jeans had holes in the knees and his black Dock Martin’s were scuffed. His faded black tee declared ROCK RULES: DEAF LEAPARD ETERNITY TOUR.

Gabriel sighed. “Come on, Zira. Make a move.”

The blond teen zig-zagged through the swirling crowds, trying his best not to touch anyone. His blue jeans were pressed, sharp creases down each leg, his button-down shirt just as neatly pressed and buttoned beneath his argyle-print sweater vest.

“Right then, almost done.” Gabriel tugged his crisp gray jacket down to straighten any wrinkles. His eyes darted around, like he was looking for someone.

Beelzebub worried for a moment, thinking the archangel was looking for them, but then realized that he was probably scouting for any other angels in the area that might be surprised to find him escorting a disgraced demon with memory loss into a Foster Care office.

They would be equally surprised to find him escorting an exiled angel in, but that would be a pleasant surprise.


	2. The Secondary Plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new kids in the Foster Care System find a summer home--coincidences abound.

Margaret Potts—who might be recognized in London as Madame Tracey, but who might not, since she’d let her hair return to its natural bottled brown and kept her drooping cleavage under wraps—set the teapot on the table and smiled at her cottage-mate.

“Come now, Mr. Shadwell, it’ll only be for the summer.” She poured tea into his cup, topping it up with large dollop of sweetened condensed milk.

“But why?” He whined and stirred his tea, letting the tiny spoon clink ominously against the porcelain china.

“I’ll get a nice tax discount for taking one in. It said so in the advert.” Margaret sipped her own tea, embellished with three lumps of sugar and a good squeeze of lemon. She was trying to cut back on dairy ever since she’d read an article about lactose being a cause for bloat and gas.

“But where will we be puttin’ it?”

Margaret tutted. “It’s not a thing, Mr. Shadwell, it’s a child. You can’t go ‘round calling it an “it” now, can you?”

“I s’pose not.” He slurped his tea and chose a biscuit from the plate in the center of the round table. It was jam-filled and looked like strawberry, his favorite. He bit in, wincing when the taste hit his tongue. It was raspberry; he hated raspberry, all those little seeds getting stuck in his teeth. He ate it though; Maggie didn’t like wasting food. “D’you ask fer a boy or a gal?”

“Mr. Shadwell,” Margaret watched him suck at his teeth with a slight frown—she’d expressly told the grocer she didn’t want the raspberry filled—and sighed, “you don’t ask for anything. They just give you. It’s not like they have a stock of them and can fill an order like from a catalog. You get what they have.”

“How old? D’ye think it’ll be able to help me fix the shed and the fence and the-“

“Like I said, you get what you get. You can’t ask for somethin’ specific.” Margaret refilled her teacup, taking a deep breath to bolster her patience. “Anyways…I filled out the application and got a call yest’day that I was approved as long as I had my own place and a bedroom. I told ‘em I owned my cottage, though I’m still making a few payments, and that there’s a whole big attic room for them to sleep in.”

Mr. Shadwell chose a second biscuit, this one lemon—yellow could only be lemon—though it turned out to be something akin to banana but not quite. “And they said yes?”

“Yes.” Margaret nodded, batting heavily mascaraed eyes at him.

Blinking and swallowing hard, Mr. Shadwell forgot what he was doing in the moment and choked on a butter crumb, slurping the rest of his tea to wash it down.

“And we’ll need to go pick it—him or her, rather—up tomorrow morning by nine a.m. at the local Foster home office two towns over.” She chose a biscuit from the plate, selecting one with a brown filling that might be chocolate, but turned out to be golden syrup crème when she bit into it—her favorite.

“Two towns over?” Mr. Shadwell eyed the plate, wondering if he could chance another biscuit. “Can we spare the petrol?”

“I’m sure the tax discount will be better than the petrol to get over there. We can stop at the big thrift store on the way back to see if they have a Macintosh that fits you. Remember? You got a hole in the back of the one you have when you tried to fix the fence and caught it on one of the nails you’d put in crooked?”

Mr. Shadwell considered the possibility. He wouldn’t mind checking for a new pair of rubber boots, as well. And he could always see if there were any building materials in the back for cheap. He needed more nails for the fence and wood for the shed. “We should be fine, as long as we ration our driving to the post office and grocer.”

“Well,” Margaret leaned forward, “we might be able to save lots of petrol if we can send the child on foot. We’re supposed to make sure they get exercise and all that. Books and entertainment. A carefree but character-building summer, per the advert.”

The next morning at eight a.m. sharp, or maybe it was five after the hour as Mr. Shadwell wasn’t great at keeping the clocks coordinated with Greenich Mean Time, the two cottage-mates clambered into the second-hand Toyota from the 1970s that had come with the purchase of the cottage (having been forgotten by the previous owner under a pair of dusty canvas tarpaulins) and headed down the lane for the Foster Home office two towns over. The going was slow—the engine sputtered and coughed and burped whenever someone pressed the petrol pedal. It spurted black smoke and chugged along, holding up traffic far more efficiently than Dick Turpin ever had.

They arrived at their destination at eight fifty-nine by Mr. Shadwell’s calculations, though the Foster Home office considered them ten minutes late and were wondering what they were going to do with the last two foster teens sitting in the waiting room. They’d just received word from one prospective foster family that they would not be coming for their summer guest as the grandmother had passed and there was no longer any need to have someone come stay the summer so they could go on holiday to Lisbon.

And that was why, when Mr. Shadwell and Margaret Potts arrived last, they were greeted by an oily smile and a sales pitch on how two teens would be better than one—they could entertain each other, after all—and just think, there would be double the tax discount!

The deciding pitch, however, was the words “well, you’re late and last, and if you don’t take both you won’t get either and there goes your tax discount and you’ve a wasted trip.”

Mr. Shadwell didn’t like the idea that it was a wasted trip; they’d expended all that petrol on the guarantee that they’d get it back with the tax discount, so he agree and signed the papers while Margaret took both boys—aged sixteen—out to the car to put their baggage in the boot. He was already thinking about how much fence and shed and even painting of the cottage window shutters, that he hadn’t been planning to accomplish this summer, but he now could with two helpers, and grinning like ‘thee olde foole’ he had been called in the past.

Margaret was still shuffling items in the boot—tetrising the spare tyre, the frayed set of jumper cables they’d purchased from the thrift shop the last time they’d been by and the Toyota had died by the side of the road, and Mr. Shadwell’s Witchfinder Army papers that were still in boxes in the trunk as he’d never bothered unpacking them to the cottage.

“I suppose I can hold my duffle on my lap?” The red-headed teen let his head loll to the side and rolled his eyes behind dark glasses.

“Oh, that would be ever so helpful, dear.”

The blond hefted his hard case over the side and settled it into the slot between the crumpled boxes, shoving at it twice to jam it far enough forward for the lid to close.

Mr. Shadwell joined them, clapping his hands against his thighs, dust rising from his torn Macintosh. “Are we ready then?” He was anxious to get to the thrift store before the rush.

The blond grimaced and shrugged.

“What’s yer name agin, laddie?”

“Zira. Zira Smythe.” The teen spoke with exact tones, his eyes roving over the shabby form of the speaker, resting briefly on the array of badges and medals, stopping on the one that read WITCHFINDER, SERGEANT. “What is a Witch Finder?”

“Oh, no need to get on aboot that—I’m retired now.” Mr. Shadwell waved to the back seat of the car. “Get in, get in. And yoor name, laddie?” He raised a brow at the boy in black.

The red head sneered. “I’m Tony.”

“Ye got a last name there, Tony?”

“Yeah, Smith.” And the boy tossed his duffle in behind the blond and sank into the seat, the move akin to the languid sinking of molasses into muffin batter.

Grinning, Mr. Shadwell opened the passenger door for Margaret and closed it behind her, shuffling around the car to the driver door. Yes indeed, two strapping young lads to help him fix up the cottage. Well worth the petrol expenditure for the day.


	3. The Main Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tony" and "Zira" get to know a bit about their summer fosters.

Tony wasn’t sure what to think about the odd couple in the front seat.

The man was shabby and unkempt, his Macintosh torn and frayed and dusty. Both the man’s hands gripped the steering wheel, like he wasn’t sure if it would remain steady and keep the car on the road. He’d sniff and scratch at his scruffy white beard, and the car would drift to the side, and he’d clutch the wheel again, overcompensating to squeal back over the middle line.

The woman, also older, but better preserved, hummed and tittered in the seat next to him, patting her hair back into place every so often, even though nary a strand fell out of place. She sang along to the fuzzy song on the radio, off key but not seeming to care.

He knew better what to think of his back-seat companion.

The boy beside him, huddled into the door, both hands clutching the arm rest, closed his eyes and whimpered every time the tyres veered ever so lightly toward the shoulder. Behind his sunglasses, Tony could admire the blond curls that fell innocently over his forehead, framing the blue-grey eyes that opened to check that they were all still alive and hadn’t gone hurtling over an embankment to their doom.

This boy acted like he’d never been in a car before, or maybe, it was that his parents had died in an accident of some sort and he’d been trapped in the back seat unable to help anyone. That could explain why he was in Foster Care.

Tony had no idea why he, himself, was in Foster Care. According to his papers when he’d asked and someone had bothered to answer, he had no parents. None at all. No names, no dates except his birthday that put him at all of sixteen years old last April Fool’s, no address or thrice-removed next of kin. It was like someone had found him on the side of the road with a name tag that included his manufacture date.

Only, he also felt that they’d gotten the name tag wrong. He didn’t feel like a “Tony” and when folks called him that, he’d forget to answer since he didn’t feel like it was his name.

Now, if they’d ever call him “Anthony” he might answer. That was a name with weight and sounded like something he might like to be called. An important name. Nothing like “Tony”.

“What’d you say your name was?” Tony leaned closer to the boy, leaning an elbow into the duffle on the seat between them.

The boy opened one eye and stared at him, swallowing. “Zira,” he whispered.

“What kind of name is that?” It sounded exotic, very un-British. “Were your parents from away?”

Zira shrugged, the movement slight because he wouldn’t let go of the door. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much about them.”

Tony nodded. He could understand that; his own memories were sparse. Well, that wasn’t right. He had lots of memories: a birthday party or two, Christmases, Easters, school trips, being sick…but all he remembered was him, no one else. Surely even a school trip would have had other kids in it. There was a small part of him that wondered if that was the real reason he was in Foster Care—that he was crazy and no one wanted to admit him to an insane asylum because his care would break the NIH accounts. “Me neither.”

Frowning, Zira turned his whole face to look at Tony. “Why would you remember my parents?”

Lolling his head, Tony stared a moment before answering. “I meant my parents. I don’t remember them, either.”

“Oh, so sorry.” The blond laughed, but it wasn’t really a laugh. There was nothing funny to laugh about. It was really just a rush of embarrassed air escaping his lungs in a rush.

“S’okay.” Tony lolled his head back to looking at the back of Mr. Shadwell’s head. He found it hard to look straight on at the other boy, the soft grey-blue irises distracted him and made him think of clear skies in winter, but instead of making him cold, they made him feel warm.

Zira swallowed the nervous lump in his throat and stared at his companion. The lanky form beside him seemed so comfortable in the seat, so easy in the moving car, not seeming to care that they could crash at any moment. He didn’t think the speedometer worked; that, or Mr. Shadwell wasn’t bothering to pay attention to what it told him.

He dug his fingers into the sun-hardened arm rest. The fake leather, once soft and pleather-like, had been hardened from years of baking without protection, and it was dusting off onto his gripping fingers.

They were going to die, all four of them, in a fiery crash when Mr. Shadwell rounded a bend and rammed straight on into a careening lorry. He’d read about such crashes in the newspapers.

That was all there was to read in the waiting rooms at the Foster Care office, both the main and the local. He wished he had a book to read, though none of his memories were of him ever reading a book. Vaguely, he wondered how he might even know what a book was, since he had no memory of ever reading one. His only memories were of a birthday party with a cake, a Christmas day present opening, and an Easter Mass service spoken in Latin where he knew all the words, even the ones the Priest pronounced wrong.

He took a deep breath, whooshed it out, and then took in another. The therapist at the Foster Care office had told him that deep breathing could stop a panic attack and had gone over how it needed to be done over and over again. Deep breath in through the nose, then a long one out the mouth until all the air was out of his lungs.

It made him lightheaded.

Or maybe that was just from watching the other boy’s Adam’s apple bob when he swallowed. His neck, like the rest of his body, was lean, sinewy, like there wasn’t a spare centimeter of flesh anywhere on him.

Zira turned his mind back to books; that had worked for the past few days, whenever something got into his mind that he thought he ought not be thinking about. But it didn’t now, and he did the deep breathing again.

“Ever’thing all right back there?” Mr. Shadwell made a hard stare into the rearview mirror.

“Oh, yes, sir.” Zira spoke. He didn’t like how he sounded out of breath.

“Ye doan ‘ave asthma, do ye?”

“No, sir.” Zira gripped the door even tighter. Mr. Shadwell’s gaze was no longer on the road and the Toyota careened from one edge to the other.

He closed his eyes tight and said a prayer that when they went over, they either all made it out alive with only scratches or they all died quickly with very little pain.

“I don’t think he likes cars.” Tony spoke up, leaning forward to point out the front window. “You might want to watch the road.”

Mr. Shadwell looked ahead and straightened the car.

“We’re almost to the thrift shop. We could all use a little rest from the trip.” Ms. Potts’ over-cheery voice did little to soothe Zira.

When the car pulled into the dirt lot next to what looked like a dilapidated barn, Zira let out his breath and eased his grip on the door. He worked his stiff knuckles, wishing he had a napkin or even a tissue to wipe the plastic dust from his fingertips.

“Well, boys, come along. Mr. Shadwell has a couple of items he’s looking for. You might as well take a quick look around. Ye have everything you need, though, right?” Ms. Potts looked each of them up and down.

“Yes, ma’am.” Zira nodded, using one hand to keep his blond curls up. He scrunched his fingers into the curls, pulling them up a bit, wondering how long they’d be stopped and if he’d be able to slow his heart rate before they were off again.

Inside the barn were shelves reaching up, and even into the ceiling it seemed, each piled high with random assorted artifacts and items that one might be able to identify under close scrutiny.

“Let me know if ye see a Macintosh still all in one piece.” The direction came from the depths of the shelving, a seeming disembodied voice suggesting a commandment that Zira wasn’t sure how to fulfill. How could one find anything in the rambling hoard of junk in front of them?

In the end, no one found a suitable Macintosh, but Mr. Shadwell found a pair of rubber boots that fit, as well as a small carton of nails. He’d also found a sheet of plywood he wanted to get, but with the boys in the back seat, there was nowhere to put it to get it back to the cottage, so they had to leave it behind.


	4. The Stage is in theAttic

“It isn’t much, but we had to put a new roof on the month after we moved in, so there aren’t any leaks to worry about. You’ve got the whole room to yourselves, too, so that’s a bonus.” Margaret showed them up the staircase to the attic.

The room stretched the whole length of the cottage, a round window set in a low dormer at each end.

“It’s not really set up for a bedroom, so its camp mattresses and lanterns, and some low shelves for your clothes, but I’m sure it will be fine for the summer.”

Tony surveyed the expanse. He could only stand within the five-foot width in the very center, and the camp mattresses needed to be blown up. At the moment, they were bundled in one corner, tied with bungee cords and covered with plastic sheeting.

He set his duffle down and retrieved one of the bundles, staking claim to one end of the room—the end farthest from the stairs—and unwound the plastic and rolled out the mattress.

Zira did the same, carrying his bundle to the other end, and standing, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He set it down, scuffing a foot along the floor, scrunching his nose when it left a mark in the thick layer of dust.

Taking pity on him—he didn’t look like one who had ever been camping in his life—Tony unwrapped the mattress and rolled it out for him.

The boy sighed and shook his head. “All that dust.”

Tony shrugged and squinted behind his shades; he wondered briefly if it was going to be a difficult summer sharing a room with the other boy. Would he be the type that couldn’t ever get dirty or had to have every item in its place? Tony liked things neat and tidy, but wasn’t sure he could handle someone else that was the same way, especially if they wanted stuff in a different place.

But the boy only sighed and knelt on the floor to open his case and pull out his clothes, placing them in neat piles on the shelf at his end of the attic. One pile of identical pairs of denims, one pile of identical shirts—though they might have been slightly different hues of off-white, but it was hard to tell in the dim light—and one neat pile of sweater vests. Tony was relieved to see they were not all argyle.

“Don’t you own a t-shirt?” Tony stared at the piles. They didn’t look like clothes any teenager worth his salt would wear.

“No.” Zira pulled out seven pairs of rolled socks one set at a time, lining them up on the top shelf, followed by seven rolled pairs of tartan boxers.

“Huh.” Tony cocked his head and stared at the boy. “Who picked out your clothes?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know, really. They just came with me in the suitcase when I was brought to the Foster Care office. Maybe they came from the man who dropped us off—what was his name? Gideon?”

Tony shrugged. He hadn’t paid attention to names. He’d been more concerned with figuring out what was in his duffle bag—that he also didn’t remember packing—only to find out it was full of black clothes, right down to his socks and knickers.

Walking back to his end of the attic, Tony pulled his stuff out of the duffle and shoved it all onto the shelves. He rather thought it was expected of him to be messy, what with all the black and the tears in his jeans. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

Zira looked over his clothes, they took up very little space on the shelf.

“Here ye go.” Mr. Shadwell’s head appeared over the side of the stairs, tossing two sleeping bags over the top, followed by two pillows already in their cases. “Everything else getting’ settled?”

Nodding, Zira took one pillow and one bag, setting them on his mattress, then picking up the others to take to the other end. He offered them to Tony, who accepted them and tossed them aside, patting the mattress beside him.

Zira sat, cross-legged, next to the other boy, who reclined, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. He made sure his shoes stayed off the mattress; no sense getting it any dirtier than it needed to be.

“I think so, sir.”

“Yup.” The other boy agreed, and Mr. Shadwell’s head disappeared. “You’re good, eh?”

Zira shrugged. “Must be. Don’t have anything else to settle out.” He looked down at his end of the attic and wished for books; books would look nice on the rest of the shelves. They could fill the shelves, neat stacks of hard covers, lines of well-read paperbacks. Even a couple of large photo books and an atlas would be nice.

“What are you thinking?” Tony asked.

Could he tell him? Or would he laugh like the assistant at the Foster Care office had laughed when he’d asked if there were any books?

“I was just thinking that the shelves would look nice if they had books on them.”

“Books? You mean like graphic novels or comics?” Tony leaned all the way back, wriggling down so his bottom half was on the floor, his top half still on the mattress, and his arms had enough room to bend so he could wedge his hands beneath his head.

“No, I mean books.”

“Huh?”

At least he wasn’t laughing.

They sat quiet for a moment.

“Is your name really “Tony”? You don’t look like a “Tony”.” Zira shifted to lean back, letting the back of his head rest against the bookshelf.

“It is according to my paperwork.”

Zira said nothing. His paperwork said his name was “Zira”, but it felt like some of it was missing. He couldn’t think of any names with z-i-r-a in them, so he’d given up on thinking what else his name might be.

“I think I feel more like an “Anthony”.”

“Isn’t “Tony” short for “Anthony”?”

“I think it can be, but my papers only have t-o-n-y on them. And s-m-i-t-h. That’s my last name—according to my papers.”

“Mine’s with a “y’ and “e”.”

“What, Tyne or Smythe?”

Zira nodded. “Smythe, of course.” He thought it seemed odd that their last names were similar, though to be perfectly honest, it was a fairly common name with several different spelling variations; it probably wasn’t that odd at all.

He suffered through another pause in the conversation.

“I turned sixteen on April first. April fool to me, eh?” The boy shifted, the movement like an undulating current.

Blinking, Zira replayed the comment in his mind. “April first?”

“Yup.”

“But that’s my birthday, too.”

“Good thing we don’t look identical or we might think we were in a movie about twins getting reunited at away camp.” Tony rolled to look at Zira, taking off his glasses, his amber-colored eyes crossing more than should be possible.

Something poked at Zira’s brain, something he felt was important, but he couldn’t stick it down and it escaped without him being able to decipher what it was.


	5. A Red-HerringConflict

Margaret opened the front door to find three young girls on the stoop; she had to cluck over their chatter. “Can I help you, dears?”

One young lady, her flouncy mini-skirt hitting mid-thigh and bouncing in tune with her excitement, handed over a bright-colored flyer. “we’re from the community social club. We heard you have a couple of boys staying for the summer from the Foster Care office, and thought we should drop off a schedule of all the stuff we have planned at the community center.”

When the one girl stopped to take a deep breath, another started. This one had on a crop top and hip-shorts. “It’s all above-board and our parents or the police act as chaperones or sponsors for each event. Sometimes both.”

Margaret wondered what the ‘both’ meant, but couldn’t ask for clarification, as the third girl took over the bubbling spew of information.

“Sometimes it’s the church that sponsors, but then the little kids have to come, too, so we don’t put that on our schedule. That’s more for whole family stuff than just for us, so we don’t include it. We only include the stuff that’s just for us—the dance, the indoor beach party, the bus trip into London, the-.”

All three girls stopped talking; all three leaned a little to the side to peer around the brown-haired woman, their mouths a little open, their breathing growing raspy.

Tony jumped from the second step from the bottom. “Ms. Potts, is it okay if I get a broom? There’s a bit of dust up there.”

Margaret turned and smiled. “Of course, dear. Sorry we couldn’t get it cleared better before you came. We were given approval short notice like and weren’t quite ready to take you.”

“In the cupboard in the kitchen next to the icebox?”

“Yes, dear.” Margaret turned back to the young ladies on her front steps. “Thank you. I’ll make sure to share this information with both boys in case they’re interested. Is there a cost involved?”

The three girls shook their heads in unison.

One gasped and blinked then…“No—all of it’s sponsored by the community center, ‘cept the bus trip. There’s a fee to help pay for lunch and the driver.” She leaned farther to the side to watch Tony saunter into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” another of the girls sighed, “but there’s a form you can fill out to get help with paying for that. You can ask my mum for one.”

The last girl only nodded, her eyes drifting to the stairs, where they widened when she saw the other boy standing on the bottom step.

“Ms. Potts?” Zira’s voice was soft, like he wasn’t sure he should interrupt. “Are their cleaning rags? I could wipe the windows down.”

Ms. Potts waved the flyer at him. “Oh, yes, dear. In the kitchen under the sink in a little bin. And at dinner, you and Tony can look this over and see if there’s anything you’d want to go to.”

Zira eyed the flyer in her hand, his eyebrow dipping into a light frown. He shrugged and sighed.

The three girls nodded, hard enough their chins bumped their chests.

Zira nodded and edged off the last step to make his way to the kitchen and the cleaning rags.

Shaking her head, Margaret nodded and shooed the girls away, pressing the schedule to her chest. A little socializing might be just what these boys needed. Some fun—cheap fun—that she wouldn’t have to put out money for.

Frowning, she looked at the flyer. She hadn’t gotten the one girl’s name to find out her mother to get a form…ah—there was a number on the bottom. She could ask easy enough. Surely they wouldn’t fuss about the forms when she explained they were from the Foster Care office.

Witches. They were likely witches. Mr. Shadwell glared at the three giggling figures skipping away from the cottage. Casting spells and such. He didn’t worry about Margaret succumbing; she was a wise woman who knew what to look out for. But those two young boys; he’d have to start teaching them after supper. They would need to be wary; they were too young to be ensnared by the likes of young witches.

He sniffed and rubbed a nose on a grimy sleeve, settling the rake he’d been using to clear the leaves from around the shed. He still had his books in the trunk of the Toyota. No sense in leaving them in there anymore; he was in need of their historic knowledge—and even more so were those two boys.

Aye, he’d prepare them well.

Nodding, he opened the garage door and shuffled to the ancient vehicle. The trunk stuck, but the hasp shook loose after a little pounding on the top, and it popped open. He groaned and pulled the first box forward, wriggling thick fingers under the bottom to heft it onto his hips.

“Hey, do you need help with that?”

Mr. Shadwell looked up. The blond boy hung his head out the end window, rag in hand.

“If’n it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I cud use a pair of younger arms.”

The blond head disappeared, only to reappear a minute later at the back door, a red one with him.

Zira took the box in Mr. Shadwell’s arms while Tony went to the trunk. “You bringing it all in?”

“Yup. Got sum important things to share with you two after supper.”

When Tony straightened, he had one small carton wedged beneath each arm. “To share?”

“Trainin’ o’ sorts, ye cud call it.” Mr. Shadwell slammed the trunk down three times before the latch held and followed the boys into the kitchen. The boxes were on the table, Maggie glaring at them each in turn.

She waved at the dilapidated file cartons. “Whatter ye bringing all this in for?”

“These boys need te know about witches and witchcraft, the signs te look fer and what te do if ever confronted by a witch.” Mr. Shadwell rubbed his hands together and opened the large box, running his fingers over a frayed spine inside.

“I thought ye’d left all this behind when we moved here.” Ms. Potts huffed and dropped a whole chicken into a roasting pot.

“Weel, yes, but now, I saw some what might be witches today, and thought it be best te prepare these boys afore they get snatched up by one of them and can’t get free of their spell.”

Maggie clucked and rolled her eyes at him, sharing a look with each boy to let them know she didn’t believe a word that Mr. Shadwell said, but was going to play along. “I’m sure they’ll listen hard and study the ways of the Witchfinder Army.”

Mr. Shadwell sighed and nodded. “Aye, it wud be nice to have new names on the rolls.” He looked at something mid-air, his eyes a little glazed over, as if remembering a glorious past.

Maggie nodded at the boys. “Go ahead and finish up your cleaning. Supper will be soon enough and it could take a bit for Mr. Shadwell to get through the first Witchfinder lesson. He’s a bit out of practice, you see.”

The boys wandered back up the stairs while Mr. Shadwell sorted through his books and papers, and collected all the scissors together that he could find.


	6. The Character-Building Sub-Plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scissors and newspapers and more..oh, my!

Tony bit off a curse at the dull scissors he was using to cut an article out of the paper. The endeavor was made all the harder by the fact that the newspaper wasn’t very new, and had thin, frayed edges that would rather tear than cut. “Why are we doing this again?”

“This is the main activity of the Witchfinder Army—it’s research. We’re looking for anything out of the ordinary that could indicate there be witches aboot.” Mr. Shadwell shuffled a pile of old articles once more, peering over the rims of his lenses to glare at the words he couldn’t see.

Zira sat across from Tony, skimming over the local community pamphlet that was delivered every Friday and Tuesday, with the Friday edition usually detailing all the events planned for the weekend in town and for the next town over, and the Tuesday edition recounting all the gossip and occasions of note that had happened in town and in the surrounding area since the previous Tuesday.

He hadn’t cut out many articles. It seems the local community publishing group—a hodgepodge of church groups and the better business marketing group—wasn’t in the know about witchy happenings unless it was September-almost-October.

Ms. Potts sat at the table with a cup of tea and the flyer that had been dropped off earlier by the young girl-witches. “There’s a dance on Saturday.”

“Hmph. Dancin’ be fer witches and harlots.” Mr. Shadwell sneered at an article in his hand.

Tony glanced from him to Ms. Potts. Harlots? Where were the harlots? He almost asked out loud, but then remembered where he was, and where he had been, and didn’t want them sending him back just yet.

“Language, Mr. Shadwell. I don’t do that anymore, you know that. And besides, there’s nothing wrong with dancing. And there will be parents and police on hand to keep everyone under control.”

“What if one of the parents is a witch?” Mr. Shadwell glared at Ms. Potts.

She clucked and shook her head. “And next Saturday there’s a picnic and a movie in the village green. PG of course, but it says here it’ll be a teen movie, so no kids allowed.”

“Sounds a bit off if ye ask me.” Mr. Shadwell sniffed and picked up another article, setting it back into the box of discard.

“I didn’t.” Ms. Potts rose to refill her teacup. “What do you think Tony, Zira? Do you feel like going to a dance? I’m sure the three girls that dropped the flyer off will be there.”

Tony wasn’t sure, but it sounded like Ms. Potts thought the presence of the girls would make the dance more appealing.

“I don’t know how to dance.” Zira looked up from the latest newsletter, his scissors mid-way through an article about food poisoning at a potluck the Catholic Church had held as a benefit for the homeless.

“Oh, dancing’s easy.” Tony bragged. “You just listen to music and move with it.”

Zira’s eyes widened and his pupils grew large, thinning the blue-grey around them. His breathing deepened, and he blew out his mouth. Then he spoke, his voice raspy. “But, you do that around other people?”

“Well, yeah. If it’s a dance.” Tony watched Zira hyperventilate then get his breathing under control. “You okay?”

The other boy nodded. “Yeah, it’s just…I really don’t like crowds. Too many people touching you, you know?”

Tony didn’t, not really, but he could understand someone not liking it. There was enough stuff he didn’t like.

Ms. Potts frowned and leaned close to Zira, who leaned back away from the woman. “Did someone touch you wrong?”

“Wha-a-at?” Zira stared and his hyperventilating started again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Ms. Potts leaned even closer, her voice lowering to what could almost be defined as a whisper, “were you abused?”

Zira blinked. Then shook his head.

But to Tony, it looked like the other boy wasn’t sure.

Zira didn’t know how to tell the woman he didn’t know if he’d been abused or not. Could that be why his memories were messed up? Because he didn’t want to remember some things that were just too horrible to think about?

Ms. Potts narrowed her eyes and tutted. “You don’t have to worry about any of that happening here.

“Okay.” What else could he say?

“Humph.” Mr. Shadwell looked over him, too. “just you remember, none of that is ever yer fault, boy. The evil folks do is all their own, and no one else’s.” He wagged a finger before resuming the sorting of articles.

“Yes, sir.” Zira was surprised at the old man’s words. Or maybe, _surprised at the words_ wasn’t entirely accurate. He was surprised that the man had said them out loud. And with conviction. Most adults he’d spoken to at the Foster Care offices had been intent on passing along any responsibility for their actions.

And honestly, he couldn’t remember any other adults.

Which probably meant his lack of memories wasn’t because of abuse; there was no way anyone could be abused that much. Right?

Zira went back to cutting out his single article, the scissors moving neatly through the copy paper used to print the newsletter. He felt bad for Tony; his scissors were chewing up the article he’d found.

Holding out the pair he’d been given, he offered them to the other boy.

Tony stared at them a moment before accepting them and offering his ancient pair back. These had rust spots on the blades, and the screw in the middle had lost bits of itself and was loosened to the point of possibly being dangerous.

He figured he wasn’t in too much danger from the scissors. There weren’t that many suitable articles in the newsletter. He did find out, however, that Mr. Jacobsen had a new cat—a ginger tabby that liked to prowl at midnight—and the Robertses had a new baby boy they had named Hubert Russell, after their parents—which Zira took to mean their fathers and not their mothers, but who really knew?

Neither of those articles seemed to meet the criteria of odd occurrences as defined by Mr. Shadwell and as being an indicator of witch activity. He didn’t think the description of the new mahogany altar at the Episcopal chapel was witchy, either, or the detailed accounting of the budget woes over the new cricket pitch two towns over.

He did wonder about the brief article warning of the lure of summer music by the teens of the town, but simply put that up as adult misunderstanding. Bebop was only for the young, after all, and was known to cause headaches and nausea in anyone over the age of eighteen.

“Do you need to talk to a therapist, Zira?” Ms. Potts set her cool fingers on his wrist, stopping him from flipping through the latest Friday edition of the newsletter from the previous week. He’d worked his way through almost all of them, and only had this past Tuesday left to touch. “I can call the Foster Care home local and see if they have someone.”

Her eyes were kind and a little sad and Zira wanted to reassure her that it wasn’t necessary, but even if he did need a therapist, he wasn’t sure he’d want one from the Foster Care office. No one there had listened to him about anything else he’d wanted to talk about, past abuse would probably fall on the same deaf ears.

“No, ma’am.”

Tony snorted, and that made Zira mad, until the boy spoke up. “It’s not like they’d listen.”

“Whad’ye mean?” Mr. Shadwell looked up from a yellowed bit of paper advert.

Zira shrugged. “They just don’t seem all that interested in helping anyone, just in processing them and moving them somewhere so they don’t have to deal with them anymore.”

Ms. Potts tutted again and got up to refill her teacup once more and grab a tin of cocoa and cherry biscuits from the cupboard. “What do they do if they aren’t helping you?”

Sighing, Zira went back to reading over the headlines of the newsletter. “I think it’s just that there are too many kids and not enough adults that can help them.”


	7. More Sub-Plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chores.

Thursday morning, the two boys helped Mr. Shadwell fix the fence and then finished raking the leaves up around the shed. That afternoon, they helped clear out the shed and put the refuse by the roadside for pickup Friday morning.

That evening, they both got papers to read, but shared the single good pair of scissors since there weren’t that many articles that needed to be cut out. When they were done, Mr. Shadwell read a chapter from one of this witchfinder training manuals; one that explained the attributes of a witch.

The main attributes quoted by the training manual were:

An excess of nipples.

Wild hair that could not be tamed.

A penchant for chanting—especially spells and hexes.

A penchant for rhyming when speaking—which meant they were chanting a spell.

Dancing at midnight under a full moon while naked.

On Friday morning, the trash collecting lorry thundered by at 5 am, waking both boys from a light slumber. Neither would admit that they’d had nightmares about a witch invading the cottage and dancing naked over their prone, sleeping bodies while someone played bebop music on the front stoop and giggled out a spell.

Later Friday morning, they stained the shed with the old paint that they’d found inside and Mr. Shadwell had decided was too good to throw out. It was thick and not quite of matching colors, so the boys mixed them together in one pot with a little bit of slightly off turpentine to make it easier to brush on.

Though Tony didn’t mind getting paint on his clothes, as his t-shirt and jeans were pretty ragged to begin with, Zira had palpitations when a spot landed on his button down’s cuff and decided to take his vest and shirt off to keep them pristine.

The girls came by to remind Ms. Potts of the dance the next day, and that it started with punch and chips and dip at 5, followed by a quick lecture about controlling one’s hormones from Reverend Sully, and then the dancing could begin. But they got distracted by a shirtless Zira stretching up to paint under the eaves of the shed.

Tony was distracted, too, but he wasn’t as obvious about it.

He had noticed that Zira had a light dusting of pale hair on his chest. It was just as golden as the curls atop the boy’s head, and it made Tony feel inadequate, as his chest was still baby-bare.

That afternoon, they got to work in the garden by themselves, pulling weeds and checking that the plants were thriving and that vegetables were actually growing and justifying the amount of water Mr. Shadwell doused them with every morning.

Tony found spotty cucumber vines and muttered vague threats at them while pulling out the weeds around their bases. He chucked the weeds in the compost pile, explaining how they deserved what they got for daring to grow where they shouldn’t.

Zira found his shoulders were starting to burn and went inside to ask Ms. Potts for sunblock.

That evening, they got a lecture about the wiles of women and how to resist those wiles by Mr. Shadwell.

When Mr. Shadwell started snoring in his lopsided recliner by the window with his pipe smoking in the ashtray on the side table, they got a similar talk from Ms. Potts, though her lecture contained much more accurate and useful information than his.

On Saturday morning, they were told that they’d be going to the dance that evening, especially since Reverend Sully had just called and specifically invited them to attend. It seems he felt that the event could be most beneficial to two young troubled lads from the city who needed tough love to get back on the straight and narrow way.

At 4:30 pm, Tony had just finished ironing his black t-shirt to wear under his one black button-up short-sleeve shirt.

Zira had mostly tamed his curls; he’d spent the better part of the last twenty minutes dampening them and combing them to the side over and over until he’d given up, tugged them straight up, and they’d stayed that way. At least they were out of his eyes. He wore his regular jeans—pressed without really needing the work—and a cream button down and pale blue sweater vest.

“I feel like I should have a tie.” Zira fumbled with the collar of his shirt. It looked wrong buttoned to the top without something there, so he was leaving the top button loose, and that seemed wrong for a formal event like this.

Tony, sliding languid shoulders into his black shirt, shrugged. “I don’t see where you have a tie. And I’m not sure you’d want to borrow any Mr. Shadwell could offer.”

“True.” Zira sighed and fussed with his collar again. “It just feels like something is missing, you know?”

Tony ran a finger along the skin in front of his ears, where a sideburn might have grown in a past era. “Yeah. I do know.”


	8. More Character-Building

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tony" and "Zira" and dancing...um...no.

Reverend Sully liked to talk.

The ice in Tony’s punch had long melted and weakened the already watered-down beverage. Beside him, in another hard-back plastic orange chair, Zira blinked and sighed. He, too, had a near full cup of punch-tinged water.

The two sat near the back, having arrived three minutes past six because Mr. Shadwell had gotten lost on the way to the community center, and hadn’t wanted to stop and ask for directions. Ms. Potts had finally hollered out her window at a man walking his dog, and since the car had sputtered to near stalling, she’d been able to get full directions to the center.

Reverend Sully had been waiting for them. It seems he’d delayed the start of his sermon—ahem, teen talk—until they’d arrived, causing the Women of St. Agatha’s Charitable Endeavors to add extra water to the punch bowl and extra sour cream to the chive dip to make it last the extra half hour.

The teens had gotten restless, and Mrs. Perkins—eighty years young and counting—had badgered the good Reverend into ushering them into the large classroom to get things started. The women would soon run out of food and drink and who knows what the young hooligans would do if they weren’t allowed to eat or dance.

So the Reverend had started—he’d just finished clearing his throat and tapping the microphone at the front of the room attached with black electrical tape to an oak-veneered lectern—when the boys had arrived, had a glass shoved into heir hands, and been pushed into the last two chairs available in the back row next to the door.

“During the teen years, it may be difficult to make good decisions and omens of impending trouble abound. This is when you must ask yourself, what would God want me to do?” The Reverend’s amplified voice echoed in the corners of the room.

The teens chattered away, conducting their own conversations that in no way pertained to asking God about future decisions.

This only made the Reverend speak louder into his microphone and the echoes reverberate even more.

“I’d like to ask Her to make you stop talking.” Tony’s mutter caused the girl in front of his to gasp and spin in her seat. “You mean _Him_.”

“Him who?” Tony asked, leaning forward.

“God. He. Him. You know, the Father to the Son and Holy Ghost.”

Tony raised a brown to meet his hairline and sat back. He turned to Zira. “I think a son needs a mother, don’t you?”

Zira nodded. “A mother sticks around more than a father. I mean, if a son was delivered and it was the holy ghost that did the delivering-“

“Shhh.” Mrs. Perkins spit around her raised finger.

The boys nodded and each took a sip of almost-punch. At least it was cold.

When Reverend Sully grew hoarse and stopped talking, the teens stood and moved to the main room.

Zira watched them file past, wondering at the sheer number of teens present and puzzling at where they came from. Was there really that many teens living in the town, or had they come from other towns?

There looked to be more girls than boys, and that worried him.

When most of them had filed out, Tony stood and stretched and jerked his head in the direction of the other room, waiting for Zira to nod and stand before shifting away from his seat to file behind the others.

The music, when it started, was from the fifties, and the girls giggled and formed groups to jump and bounce to the music. The boys lined the walls, holding it up with their shoulders.

Zira found a spot next to Tony. It was near a window, and he checked that it wasn’t locked and that he could open it and jump out if he needed to. The community center was only a single story, a slab of concrete with laminate tiles in several shades that made it obvious they’d been donated from several different projects to keep the costs down.

The music blared from the hi-fi in the corner and Zira winced. He just knew he’d have a headache come morning.

“You okay?” Tony mouthed the words, not bothering to actually try to speak aloud above the music.

Zira shrugged. What could Tony do?

“Come on. No one’s watching.” Tony whispered in Zira’s ear, close enough his lips brushed the lobe and made Zira shiver.

He followed without question and the pair made their way to the front door and freedom.

They almost made it.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mrs. Perkins leaned her head back to glare down her nose. The boys were taller than her four-foot nine frame that had been a sound five-two at eighteen but been worn down over the decades.

Zira swallowed and gagged a little. “I feel sick.”

His pallor made the claim believable and the elderly woman took a step back. “You been drinking?”

Tony held up a Styrofoam cup. “Only your punch. Mr. Shadwell dropped us off after an hour trying to find the place. Zira doesn’t do well on car rides or in crowds.”

Closing his eyes, Zira starting his breathing exercises. He didn’t really need them yet, but he’d found that if he did them long enough and speeded up the rhythm, it could actually cause him to hyperventilate and made folks back away and leave him alone.

It worked just like that with Mrs. Perkins. “Of course, of course. Get outside and have a nice breath of fresh air.”

Tony took Zira’s arm and led him toward the doors.

Zira kept his eyes close; he thought it would lend even further credence to his fictional dilemma.

The air outside was cooler and the music muffled once the doors closed behind them. Zira opened his eyes and sighed, looking up at what should have been stars but was only a blur of dark sky behind the bright lights that illuminated the entire outside surface of the walls of the community center.

“Let’s go this way.” Tony grabbed Zira’s hand and led him away from the lights and cars and music, tossing his punch cup in a nearby dustbin along the way.

_This way_ was toward a shed that housed cricket and tennis equipment for the community to use once the cricket pitch was reseeded and the tennis courts finished.

Tony stalked away from the large building and the misguided women whose idea that a dance social was in any way beneficial to today’s teens. Little did they know, nothing of the Reverend’s sermon had sunk into any of those hormone-addled brains.

He was upset that Zira was sick. The other boy was pale and hyperventilating and had been wincing with every twang of sock-hop guitar strain.

“Here. Sit down.”

The far side of the outbuilding had a bench and Zira sank down, resting his head back against the cool wall. He breathed deep, not bothering much about the in the nose and out the mouth bit. If that’s what had brought up the hyperventilating, continuing the process wasn’t going to stop it.

“I’m okay.”

“You’re pale.”

“I’m always pale.” Zira opened his eyes.

Tony was right there, only an inch from the other’s boy’s face, and he noticed the faint flushing of cheeks and the slight flaring of nostrils. “You were hyperventilating.” He didn’t move away.

“That was kind of…on purpose.” Zira’s gaze slid away.

Tony moved his head to keep eye contact. “What?”

Zira sighed. “I can make myself hyperventilate…sometimes. I mean, it doesn’t always work, so it isn’t fool-proof, but I can usually get close enough, and if I’m some place with a lot of people and crowded, I’ll start sweating and…anyway, people will think I’m sick and leave me alone.”

Staring, Tony considered the confession. “Well then, I’ll need to remember that. Just promise you won’t do it to me.” He slumped down next to Zira.

“Make you hyperventilate? I don’t think I can.” Zira frowned and shifted, not away from Tony exactly, but he straightened.

“No. Hyperventilate so I’ll think you’re sick. Just tell me that you need to be left alone.” Tony rolled his head to look at Zira. He sighed; that boy had a beautiful profile.

Zira turned his head to look at Tony. “Okay. You do the same, okay?”

Tony shrugged. When that blue-gray gaze looked at him straight on, or mostly so since they were a little uneven sitting on the bench, he found it hard to concentrate.

He wanted to just pass it off as the intensity of the color, but it was more than that. Though Zira’s eyes were a deep color, with very little of the golden bit at the pupil, they weren’t best described as _intense_, but _soft_. Soft, like the curls on his head and the skin on his hand—yes, Tony had noticed that, too, when he’d hauled him away from the center. Soft, like the sky in winter before it got cold, but the gray seeped into the blue and mixed and swirled to let you know it was almost time to curl up in front of a warm fire with a thick blanket and a hot drink.

A memory stirred and flit through Tony’s mind, but he couldn’t quite catch it. There was a flame and a drink—not cocoa or coffee but something spicy and heady—and a fur rug?

And it was gone. And he wasn’t even sure he’d really remembered it.


	9. More supporting Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did you think I'd forget Anathema and Newt? Or the occultist cottage she lives in? Or that maybe fires don't burn EVERYTHING?

“Something’s messing with the ley lines.” Anathema squinted through the lens on her tripod.

“Do you think it’s Adam?” Newt squinted at Anathema.

Anathema shook her head. “I don’t think so. This is from just this week, and he went off to a month-long summer camp three weeks ago. I’m sure if it was from Adam it would have started then and not now.” She made a short note in her book and frowned.

“What else could it be? Adam’s the only former anti-Christ we know, yes?” Newt watched his fiancé shut her notebook and pack it away into her satchel. That was his cue, and he carefully unscrewed the monocular from the tripod, wrapping it in soft chambray before placing it in the velvet bag to put in the satchel next to the notebook.

“Yes, he’s the only one we know. And I’m not sure Hell could get another one made this quickly. I mean, it took them almost 6000 years to get to this one.” Anathema tucked her pencil in the little pocket especially for it while Newt folded the tripod down and set it against his shoulder to carry back to the cottage.

“I don’t think they spent the whole 6000 years making the anti-Christ. I would think it maybe only took, you know, nine months?” Newt followed his fiancé across the open field to the footpath that led up the hill.

She’d explained why she no longer felt safe riding her bike in the dark, but he hadn’t quite got it. After all, there was no longer an angel and demon tearing around the countryside looking to stop the anti-Christ from starting Armageddon.

But he loved her—though sometimes he wondered if it was just because he’d been told he did, but it felt good, so what did it matter—and she knew a lot more about how Armageddon might come about than he did. Nothing in his witchfinder training had mentioned anything about angels, demons, or Armageddon.

There were times he worried that he shouldn’t have encouraged her to burn her ancestor’s second manuscript, but mostly he didn’t. She seemed out of place, sometimes, though. Like making a decision on her own was too hard and she might implode from the stress.

But Newt had learned to sense the signs and would step in and make the decision for her. At one point, the local women’s suffrage group—a collection of women born in the nineteen-fifties whose grandmother’s had started the original movement and who carried it on much to the embarrassment of their husbands—had lectured him one day after he’d had to make the decision for Anathema about whether she wanted wheat toast or rye with her coddled eggs at the pub, but eventually, Anathema had stepped in and told the leader of the group that she suffered from a mental health issue that sometimes stopped her from making decisions and that Newt was only doing what was necessary for their day to continue on.

But he would still get dirty looks from them, and they seemed to like following them around and listening in on who made the decisions.

Anathema was getting better at it every day, and just yesterday, when he’d been unsure about getting a slice of apple pie or cherry, she’d cut in and ordered one of each for them to share.

Anathema was frustrated over the ley lines. It wasn’t that they were moving or shifting, like they had when Adam was coming into his power last year and she’d been desperate to find him and stop Armageddon. It was that they were being suppressed or weakened. Something was blurring it. Something powerful and strong and dangerous.

And she didn’t know what it was.

She worried that Agnes Nutter’s second book of prophecy had been about this new threat, and she’d gone and burned it—or most of it anyway—to a crisp. There were a couple of pages from the middle that had refused to burn and she’d found them the next day and set aside in a big envelope that Newt wouldn’t find.

But if they were from the middle of her manuscript; they might not be relevant to what was happening right now. Or they might. The woman had never been all that concerned with putting things in any chronological order.

“I’m sorry, Newt. I’m just frustrated because I have no idea what’s going on. I feel lost, with nothing to guide me.” Anathema smiled at him, cocking her head a little in the way she knew made him think of other, more private activities.

She was already thinking of those activities and hastened her pace to the cottage.

“You could always check those pages that didn’t burn up.”

Anathema stopped in the track and Newt bumped into her back, almost knocking her to the ground. Instead, she caught her balance and spun around. “How do you know about those?”

Newt shrugged and half-smirked, but it wasn’t really a smirk, as that implied a certain degree of smugness, and he was never smug around Anathema. “I found it when I was cleaning out the old articles and filing them for you. You put them in a brand-new envelope; I knew it didn’t belong and had to check it out.”

“What did you do with them?”

“Filed them under “something new” in the filing cabinet I bought for you.” He’d found the tall oak monstrosity at a rummage sale and used his one and only paycheck from his one-week job at the post office to buy it for the cottage and spent the following three weeks sorting and filing and arranging all of Anathema’s file cards, articles, notes, and notebooks for easy access. The original book of prophecy sat on display on top of the cabinet on an ornate iron easel.

Anathema smiled. “I love you.”

Newt smiled back. “I love you, too.”

“Let’s get back to the cottage and check to see if there’s anything on those pages to help us figure out what’s going on, okay?”

Sighing, Newt smiled and bumped her forward to get them to the cottage faster. The sooner they looked over the pages and determined there was nothing there, the sooner they could move on to some of those private activities he liked so much.


	10. More Plotting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Gabriel and Beelzebub - and maybe a little potty humor.

Gabriel thought his golden spyglass was a much cooler look than Beelzebub’s garish camouflage-print binoculars. “What are they doing?”

“Sitting in the tomato plantzzz. It looks like they might be pulling little plantzzz out of the ground and tossing them into that heap of trash.” Beelzebub blinked at Gabriel. “Can’t you tell looking through that long monocle of yourzzz?”

“It’s a spyglass.” He held it back up to his eye, squinting through it, the other eye closed. He could see their two forms, but the image was flat and hard to decipher. “Weren’t they supposed to be kept separate? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t work at the Foster Care office.” Beelzebub looked back through the binoculars. “Wait—they’re leaving. Oh, no they aren’t. They just moved to the next section of garden.”

“Do they look in pain at all?” Gabriel frowned at the spyglass, tapping it like he could knock something into place and it would do its job. What good was it to look cool and intimidating if you didn’t work properly?

“I can’t tell. They are grimacing, but that’s all.” Beelzebub grunted and adjusted his elbows in the dirt. They hurt and he was getting dirty, though he didn’t really mind the extra grime. It would just be hard to explain away to the other demons when he got back to Hell with human-grubby all over his clothes.

The pair were laying under the brush just up the hill behind the cottage. The man who owned the land had a large tract and he didn’t use all of it. This particular bit was almost forgotten to be part of the larger plot and was, therefore, never used.

Gabriel sighed and set the spyglass down. He, too, was getting grubby in the dirt, and Beelzebub delighted in the fact that the haughty angel would have an even harder time explaining the grime to Heaven.

“I just don’t get it. I thought the teen years were the hardest, most angsty, acne-ridden, and mentally scarring years for a human. Why aren’t they in agony?” Gabriel pushed his face into the dirt, only to bring it back up, sputtering dirt off his lips. “That was not a good move.”

“Pfft. Just a little dirt. Not like there’zzz a dog pile under your face.” Beelzebub kept his gaze focused on the pair of teen boys below them.

“What? Ew!” Gabriel spit in earnest, rubbing his hands over his face and gagging. “How could you even suggest something like that? That is foul. That is nasty. That is evil.”

“While I agree that a dog pile can be foul and nasty, it izzz hardly evil. It is the remnants of a natural function of earthly caninezzz.” Beelzebub wanted to laugh, but held it in. He would laugh— roaring it out—later, in private, where he wouldn’t have to worry about the angel turning on him and discorporating him.

“I realize that it is a natural remnant, but it’s the very idea of suggesting that it might be in the debris below my face that is evil.” Gabriel gagged one last time for effect.

“Don’t worry, if there wazzz anything there, you’d be smelling it by now. You do know what shit smellzzz like, don’t you?” Beelzebub smirked. He couldn’t help it. It was fun watching the mighty archangel-fucking-Gabriel spit up his light lunch of quiche and salad.

Gabriel eyed the dirt and leaves before him. He could make out a couple of twigs and some kind of mushroom he’d crushed when he’d buried his face in it, but nothing that remotely resembled excrement.

Not that he was an expert in it or anything. He was an angel after all. He didn’t take dumps or fart or burp. When he ate, he simply miracled it away from his stomach before it reached his intestines and would have to come out his other end. It was how he operated. He refused to defile even this human-like body.

Something rumbled in his gut.

“What the Hell was that?” Gabriel rolled over, his hand rubbing over his stomach.

“What the Hell wazzz what?” Beelzebub glared over the binoculars. Something was happening in the garden below and he wanted to pay attention.

Gabriel’s holy-temple-in-human form gurgled again and a severe cramp made him curl into a ball and groan in pain. “Oh, Lord, make it stop.” He moaned and rolled the other way.

“Ssstop it. What are you doing?” Beelzebub jumped up and backed away from the angel. They’d never seen anything act like that, not even a demon being tortured for practice.

“Oh, it hurts, it hurts.”

“What hurtzzz?” Beelzebub thought about stooping over to check on his accomplice, but chased the sentiment away. That wouldn’t be very demon-like.

“Oh, oh,” Gabriel jumped up and doubled over. “I forgot to miracle away the food I ate. Oh, Lord. Please help me. What is it doing?”

“You mean you’re actually digesting your food? And you’ve never done that before?” Beelzebub giggled before they could stop it.

“It’s not funny. I’ve defiled myself.” Gabriel’s body made a very rude noise and the air stunk. “Oh.” He gagged.

Beelzebub gagged, too, and turned away, seeking cleaner air. “What did you eat?”

“Ooh, just discorporate me already.” And Gabriel miracled himself away before this body could disgrace him any more than it already had.

Beelzebub picked up the binoculars and trained them on the garden below, but it was empty except for a bevy of horse flies and a lone caterpillar, smartly feasting in the compost bin.


	11. The Garden Plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I mean, it's in a garden...

There were few weeds in the garden. They had wisely heeded Tony’s warnings to not regrow near the garden plants.

This meant it was an easy chore for the boys to clear them out and pick the few vegetables that were ready to harvest and place in the basket Ms. Potts had provided to them at the beginning of the morning.

The biggest issue with the chore was when Tony found a caterpillar happily nomming on a tomato leaf and looked ready to explode on the poor thing.

Zira had placed a calming hand on his shoulder and gently plucked the leaf from the plant and set it and the offending insect in the compost heap.

Tony was surprised that it had worked, though it was less calming and more distracting. Those cool fingers—he’d felt that through the heated black cotton of his t-shirt—had started his heart beating faster and his breathing to skip a couple of times. He was glad that Zira was busy fumbling with the caterpillar and didn’t notice.

Since they were done with their chores, they had some free time until lunch, and decided to walk up into the wooded area behind the cottage. Ms. Potts warned that she only owned the land to the fencing and maybe a foot beyond since fencing couldn’t be placed directly on the lot lines, so they needed to be careful, and if someone told them they were on private property, they needed to come back right away.

Finding a piece of fence that was still down due to a lack of repairing supplies, the two boys hopped over and were free, at least until lunch.

The wood wasn’t super dense, but it was sheltered and semi-private. It was distant from the road, the most navigable path to it being through Ms. Pott’s lot, so few folks visited the area.

Which was why Tony was surprised when they found a ten-foot area of flattened grass and disturbed earth and leaves. “I wonder whose been up here?”

Zira shrugged and sat down, leaning back against a tree where he could still see down to the cottage. “Does it matter?”

Tony frowned and looked down at the cottage. “Well, from here, there’s a good view of the cottage’s back garden. Maybe someone was spying on the cottage.”

“Why would someone want to spy on the cottage?” Zira had his eyes closed and his head resting back on the tree.

Blinking, Tony tried to remember what they’d been talking about. He could see the pulse in Zira’s throat, the creamy skin seeming to beckon his gaze.

Zira opened his eyes. “Well?”

Those eyes made his brain short-circuit and he had to hit rewind to remember anything.

Right—cottage, spying. “Well, we don’t really know that much about Ms. Potts or Mr. Shadwell, other than she used to be a harlot, and he was once a Witchfinder Sergeant, whatever that was. That could be code for something else.” Tony found his own tree to lean against, but stayed standing. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and tried his best to look cool, but suspected he just looked like an awkward teen leaning against a tree trying to look cool and failing miserably.

“I suppose there is that.” Zira frowned down at the garden. “But if they were up here this morning, they wouldn’t have been watching Ms. Potts or Mr. Shadwell. They were both in the cottage all morning while we were in the garden.”

Tony shrugged, keeping his hands in his pocket to keep up his attempt at cool going. “Maybe that’s why they aren’t here anymore.” But he thought Zira might be onto something. He sensed something about the area, something in the tramped ground and slightly fouled air. Something…evil. Like something or someone bad had been here and dripped some of the bad off so that it seeped into the dirt and plants and trees.

Zira closed his eyes and took everything in. There was something here, some remnant of power and conviction of rightness. It was…the best word he could think of was eerie, but that wasn’t the right word. It was like the opposite of eerie, something clean but strong and pungent…like someone had poured a strong-smelling bleach into the air and it had sunk down into everything.

“Do you feel that?” He had to ask. It was so palpable, there was no way Tony couldn’t feel it, too.

“Yeah.” Tony shivered. “I don’t like it. It makes me feel…dirty.”

“What?” Zira snapped his head up straight and stared at Tony. “I don’t think we’re feeling the same thing.”

“Yeah, I figured.” For a moment, the other boy looked so dejected and sad that Zira wanted to hug him, and considering he’d come near to having a heart attack if anyone so much as touched his arm, that was an odd feeling.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Tony slid down the trunk of the tree, taking his hands out of his pockets to help him shimmy to the ground.

“Are we talking about the same thing?” Zira watched Tony’s face. He looked like he’d lost his best friend.

“I don’t know, are we?” Tony’s gaze sharpened and his eyes narrowed.

“I’m talking about the feeling in the air here. Like something powerful and righteous has been here.” Zira patted the ground. “Like it’s been bathed in light.”

“Yeah, no, that’s not what I was talking about at all.” Tony shook his head, but his eyes brightened a bit, the amber depths seeming to glow in the dim shadows of the leaves. “To me, this place feels tainted. Like something foul has been here recently and oozed all over it.”

“Huh.” Zira leaned his head back again, looking up to the bits of sky visible between flittering leaves. “Maybe you sense something bad that happened and I sense where someone came and tried to counteract it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.” Zira dropped his gaze and pulled his knees up, curling his arms around them.

“Neither did I.” Tony stretched his legs out, his feet resting within inches of Zira’s.

“What made you so sad earlier, just then, when we first talked about what we felt?” Zira didn’t look up at him, so Tony couldn’t tell if he was asking because he didn’t know, or if he was asking because he knew and just wanted confirmation before laughing.

Tony considered how he wanted to answer. He could tell the truth, that he liked Zira and not just the way most boys liked another boy they wanted to be friends with. Or he could blow it off and pretend it was nothing. That he’d thought of something sad, brought on by the feelings he picked up about this piece of ground, and that was all.

Zira looked up at him, those big, blue-gray eyes seemed to look through him to the answer without him having to give it out.

“I like you.” _Fuck_. What a way to blow it off. That had been the plan, and he’d just chucked it in the dumpster.

“Oh, okay.”

Tony sighed. Zira didn’t get it.

“I mean, you know, I _like_ you.”

Zira smiled. “I like you, too.”

Groaning, Tony leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes. Why did he have to like someone as innocent as Zira? Someone who obviously had no clue about how stuff like this worked, that it wasn’t just boys with girls, but could sometimes be girls with girls or boys with boys, and that he was most likely to be in the boys with boys category? “Zira…”

The dead leaves rustled as Zira moved and his footsteps—though few—were muffled but there.

Tony couldn’t look, so he kept his eyes closed. He knew his cheeks were flushed red from embarrassment, and that they probably clashed with the red of his hair, but he didn’t really care.

And then, there were soft, cool fingers on his cheek applying a gentle pressure to turn his face and he opened his eyes.

Zira was right there, those blue-gray eyes soft and rimming with something even softer.

Tony blinked.

And then, Zira smiled and kissed him.


	12. The Subplot Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Anathema and Newt...

Anathema found the pages to be very unenlightening. There was nothing to be found in the two dozen prophecies that indicated a second coming of the anti-Christ or a second coming of Christ or the second coming of any other calamity that might bring on the end of the world.

There was nothing much in them about ley lines, either.

Although, if she had interpreted number B579 correctly, there was a high probability that she and Newt would become the parents of a little boy in nine months or so if they partook of private activities this evening.

Maybe it was time she pushed Newt to set a date for the wedding. She understood his reluctance; he really wanted to be able to provide something for their little family, but even the job at the Post Office had been a bust when they asked him to print out mailing stamps and the computer-driven printer had exploded ink over anyone and everything within a ten-foot radius.

At least they’d given him a pay-cheque for time worked.

“Anything?” Newt’s chin slipped from his palm where he’d been dozing with it propped up by an elbow and a dictionary.

“Not really, at least, not about what’s going on with the ley lines or anything. Although,” she reread number B577, “I’m not sure but that we’re not going see that angel and demon again.”

“What angel and demon?” Newt’s word slurred and his head dipped again.

“Listen:”

When memry be goone but kinship remain  
ande taken in bye elde frinds agin  
thee ploye be found oute and vengence be halted  
then angele and daemon be restored.

“See?”

But Newt couldn’t see; his eyes were closed. And he was snoring, dozing hard.

Anathema smiled and straightened the pages and pushed them back into the envelope. He really was a dear, staying up while she read over the pages, even though he had little interest in them or even believed in them or their power.

He was sweet and kind and she loved him.

Or so Agnes Nutter had told her, via prophecy. There was always a slim chance that the prophecy had been deciphered incorrectly, but that wouldn’t just mean that Anathema had been wrong, but that many of her ancestors before her had also been wrong.

And that her mother’s thorough discussion of the birds and the bees and the ducks and the swans and how humans procreated was for naught.

That prophecy had been universally understood to mean that she and the descendant of the original Witchfinder Pulsifer, who had burned poor Agnes at the stake, would worship each other’s bodies in the last hours before Armageddon.

And when she’d gotten that first look at Newton Pulsifer, though he wasn’t the most handsome or fit of men, she’d fallen.

“Newt, honey. Wake up.”

And blinking, he did, looking around the dim kitchen like he’d never seen it before until she handed him his glasses and he perched them on his nose and could see. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“That’s okay, it’s well past midnight.” The old grandfather clock showed the time at one’o three, but she didn’t want him to know just how long she’d been poring over the two pieces of paper.

He stood and stretched and smiled and held out a hand to her and she took it and followed him to their bedroom where they partook of some of those private activities.

In the morning, Newt was up first. He usually woke before Anathema, and made coffee for her and tea for himself and spread birdseed for the birds and the conniving squirrel that was too smart for him but that made Anathema laugh when it got into the feeder and Newt would try to chase him off.

When the coffee was made and fragrant, he opened the door to the bedroom so the aroma could drift in and wake up Anathema. He much preferred to wake her slow and gently instead of all at once in a rush; she was less grumpy that way.

Not that her grumpy lasted or anything. It would disappear once she’d had her coffee and a couple of good-morning kisses and a soft neck nuzzle. But when she woke gently, she’d come out of the bedroom in her soft robe, and equally soft smile on her face, and offer him a kiss first.

The envelope that contained the folded paper of prophecies was on the table. He opened it and took it out, careful of the singed edge. There was no reason for him to think that he’d get any further than Anathema had, he just wanted to read them over so if she mentioned them, he’d have an idea of what she was talking about.

The spelling was atrocious, and if he wasn’t used to Anathema’s attempts at spelling, he might not have been able to read any of them at all.

But there was one that caught his eye. Reading it, he understood more of Anathema’s comment last night. The prophecies mentioned an angel and a demon, but not names. Not that he knew their names; it’s not like they had formally introduced themselves or anything.

Angele and daemon come agin to Taddesfielde  
And bewayr the ancient conveyeer   
traypsing round thee bende of trayle.  
They faces be yung but coulur the saym.

Angel and demon. Those two men—was it appropriate to use that term? They looked like men or males or whatever—who helped Adam confront Satan and stop Armageddon.

But he had no clue about the rest of the prophecy. What was an ‘ancient conveyeer’? Was it a person or a thing? It must be something old, right? And ‘bende of trayle’? He hadn’t any idea about that.

Cool lips rested on his neck and Anathema whispered “good morning” into his ear. After a moment, she pointed to one of the sets of lines. “See, I think we’ll be seeing that angel and demon again.”

Newt nodded and cleared his throat.

Anathema had rested her chin on his shoulder, and he could feel her warm breaths on his neck. It was very distracting.

Anathema led him back to the bedroom, just in case the private activity of last night hadn’t worked properly.


	13. The Main Plot Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bet you thought we'd never get here...

They stayed quiet in the woods, sometimes kissing, sometimes not, always resting close together.

At this particular moment, Tony rested back against a thick tree, Zira resting next to him, his head on Tony’s shoulder, face nestled into the crook of his neck.

It was almost lunch.

Zira’s stomach grumbled.

Tony snickered. “Hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.” Zira sighed—the rush of heated air against his neck was enough to give Tony goosebumps—and sat up, stretching. “We should go down. It’s probably close to lunch time.”

“Probably.” Tony reached out to brush a damp leaf from Zira golden curls.

Zira looked over his shoulder and smiled.

It felt right; it felt familiar.

That didn’t make sense to Tony, but then so much didn’t make sense right now. The lack of memories, the similarities in their Foster Care paperwork. How much he felt like he _knew_ Zira.

“Come on.” Zira stood, brushing off his jeans. Straightening, he held out a hand and Tony took it, letting Zira pull him to his feet. He let his momentum carry him up and close to Zira, close enough they touched—shoulders, hips…lips.

“Zira! Tony!” Ms. Potts’ call from the cottage broke them apart.

“Told you it was lunch time.” Zira grinned and took his hand, a gentle tug getting him moving.

“We could probably set a clock by your stomach.” Tony kept his tone teasing, but he wasn’t hungry and would much rather stay in the woods, alone with Zira.

“Boys!” There was a note of desperation in Ms. Potts’ voice and they stopped, looking down from half-way up the hill.

Ms. Potts stood at the back door, wringing her hands, and glanced back over her shoulder. “I don’t know where they could be.”

Tony tugged back on Zira’s hand and ducked down.

Zira followed, hunching down, putting his ear close to Tony’s mouth like he knew his friend was going to speak.

“Someone’s there.”

Zira nodded and looked at Tony. “Something isn’t right.”

They crept closer, keeping hidden from Ms. Potts view. It wasn’t hard. The brush was all overgrown and the summer foliage was lush and dense, the only place easily passable the single path worn by many feet.

At the garden, they paused, hunkering down behind the shed, listening.

“I told them to be back by lunch. They’ve never come back late before. I’m sure they just lost track of time.”

“Ms. Potts,” this voice was deeper, clipped, the accent polished and crisp, “Foster Care is explicit in its rules about the homes it places foster children in. I’m afraid this inspection isn’t going well.”

“But… but… they’re sixteen-year-old boys. You can’t expect me to treat them like toddlers and keep them in the house all hours?” Ms. Potts sounded incredulous.

“Why not?” The voice sounded confused, like any teenager in foster care should expect to be locked up.

“I didn’t read anything about that in the guidelines I was sent by the Foster Care office.” Ms. Potts’ voice sharpened.

“Ma’am, please, I’m just doing my job.”

“It’s the stiff jackass that dropped up off to the Foster Care office in London.” Tony’s whispers, fed directly into Zira’s ear, rasped.

Zira nodded. “I wonder why he’s here? I don’t remember being told anything about an inspection.”

“Me, neither.” Tony peeked around the edge of the shed, trying to catch sight of the man.

“Be careful.” Zira’s fingers wrapped into the fabric of his t-shirt. “We can’t be seen.”

Tony watched the back door. It was open, only the black mesh screen between him and the interior of the kitchen. He could see blurred figures moving; Ms. Potts pacing back and forth in front of the door, and a stationary tall figure in a gray suit beyond her.

He ducked back, leaning close to Zira. “Yup, it’s him.”

The man’s voice carried through the open door. “I’m sorry Ms. Potts, but I’ll be taking Zira Smythe back to London with me today. We just can’t have both those boys staying here at the same time.”

Tony’s stomach twisted; so did Zira’s fingers tangled in his t-shirt.

“No.” The other boy’s voice broke on the single word; it sounded like he’d said it with his last breath.

“You’re not going anywhere with him.” Tony leaned close, forcing Zira to look him in the eyes. “If one of us leaves, we both leave. Together or not at all.”

“He’ll only take one of us. I just know it.” Zira’s voice cracked again.

“We don’t have to leave with him. We can just leave.” Tony put his hand over Zira’s, prying the fingers up, lacing his own through them to clasp his hand. “Are you with me?”

Zira stared at their joined hands. Somehow, the situation seemed somewhat familiar, but then not. Had someone in his past asked him to leave? To run off? Had he done that and that was why he was in Foster Care?

He looked at Tony, at the determination that gleamed like a flame in his amber-colored eyes.

And then, it didn’t matter if he’d run away before and that was why he was in the situation he was in now. He would go with Tony whenever he asked, wherever he wanted to go…being with Tony would make it right.

“Yes.” He whispered; it felt like a vow, like he was making a promise he could never break.

That frightened him and the panic rose, paralyzing his muscles, the bile rising from his gut into his throat. He took a deep breath in through his nose and pushed it out through his mouth.

It didn’t help.

But then, Tony ran his fingers down Zira’s cheek and leaned close, warm lips pressing where the fingers had just been. “I’m here. Together we can do this, we can do anything.”

And the fear dissipated. It didn’t subside entirely, Zira didn’t think it could—there was always a small part of him that felt that fear, like something ominous loomed on the horizon just waiting to rain pain down upon him—but it was manageable, controllable. He nodded.

Tony smiled. “Come on.”

They scurried along, keeping down and behind anything that could keep the two pairs of eyes in the kitchen from seeing them.

For a moment, Zira’s gaze crashed into Ms. Potts’ and he stopped in his tracks, staring.

She stared back.

Gasping, Zira felt the tide of fear surge, but the woman spun away and stalked to the sink, ignoring whatever it was she’d seen.

Zira caught up with Tony. “We have to hurry. I think Ms. Potts saw us. I’m not sure she can stall that man too much longer.”

“We’ll take the Toyota.”

“The car? But…” Zira could only stare.

“Come on. Believe in me. Something is telling me the car’s the way to go.”

Zira followed Tony into the garage. The main door was still open as they’d been airing it out earlier that morning, but they still didn’t have the keys. “Do you even know how to drive?”

“Just get in, angel.” And Tony opened the driver door and slunk into the seat behind the wheel.

Zira climbed in beside him, fumbling for the seat belt. “Why did you call me that?”

“Call you what?” Tony’s hands caressed the wheel.

“Angel.”

Tony turned to stare at him. “I called you angel?”

Zira nodded. He’d rather liked it; it had sounded like a caress of a word, like a pet name that held no teasing or embarrassing sentiment.

“I’m sorry?”

Zira shrugged and looked out the front window. “How do we start the car? We don’t have the keys.”

“Well,” Tony’s fingers wrapped around the wheel, gripping it, “I don’t right know, but-“

And the engine started. It chugged twice before settling in a low purr unlike anything they’d heard it emit before. It ran smooth, like it was almost-new.

Zira stared at the front hood then turned to Tony.

Tony’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. “I don’t even know how I did that.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Zira whispered. He stared in the rearview mirror. “Stick it in reverse and gun the engine. He’s found us.”

Tony didn’t wait to check for himself, but rammed the gear shift to sit on the R and slammed his foot to the gas pedal. The engine roared and the car shot backwards.

The man jumped out of the way in the last second before the Toyota would have hit him and the boys shot past a shocked Ms. Potts, one hand clapped over her mouth.

Tony waved, slammed the car into drive, and shot off down the road.

Zira held on, eyes on the rearview mirror, fully expecting the man’s big sleek car to appear at any moment to ram into the back of them.


	14. The Catalyst Event

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every story should have one...and this it the best I could do...

Newt hummed a tune he wasn’t sure he knew. It sounded right most of the time, but then he’d get to a part he wasn’t sure of, and it sounded like a different song altogether.

He led the way to the field, holding a picnic basket over his arm, a wool blanket draped over the other. They were heading off for a late lunch after a bit of a lie-in that morning. The basket held sandwiches, a small tin of biscuits, apple slices with a small tub of peanut butter and honey mixed together—it was something Anathema liked—a bin of olives and assorted pickles, and a bottle of wine, chilled and wrapped in a frozen tea towel covered with plastic wrap.

While he heard the car coming, he assumed it would stop. It didn’t sound like it was going inordinately fast; it sounded relatively muted, and so his brain interpreted the sound as being a bit farther off that it actually was.

Which meant, when the ancient Toyota careened around the bend, he was in the middle of the road, staring at it, paralyzed.

Luckily, Anathema was better prepared, having been in a similar situation the previous summer, and her reflexes worked, and she dragged him back into her and to the safety of the shoulder.

The driver hit the brakes and the tyres squealed, leaving long black skids behind on the pavement. Stopped, the tyres smoked and the whole contraption looked like it shook in fear.

“Holy heck.” Newt shook himself, patting hands, devoid of their recent loads, over his torso. Everything was intact, though when his eyes finally spotted the picnic basket, there was an ever-darkening wet stain on the pavement that looked despairingly like red wine.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” Anathema yelled at the car, her own hands patting over her fiancé. “Are you alright, Newt?”

“It think so.” Newt didn’t like how breathless he sounded, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. “I’m still in one piece, anyway.”

“And that,” Anathema lectured, “is why we always look both ways before crossing the road. Especially right here.”

Frowning, Newt licked dry lips. “But there wasn’t anything there.”

“Obviously, there was. And it almost hit you.” Anathema patted Newt’s cheek to let him know she wasn’t really angry at him, just scared and frustrated and worried.

“It sounded so far away, though.” Newt stared at the smoking clunker, sitting across the road. “Hey, you should move that out of the way before someone else comes ‘round and hits you.”

The car jerked forward, gears grinding, and lumbered to the side of the road, where it stopped with a loud clunk of defeat, a little lopsided when one of the tyres started losing air.

Two teen boys stepped out—a red head from the driver side and a blond from the passenger. Both looked pale, but the blond looked like he was ready to lose his biscuits at any moment.

“Are you old enough to drive?” Newt tried to make his voice sound authoritative. He wasn’t that much older than the boys, really, and he could understand them wanting to drive fast, but he couldn’t let them know that.

Anathema was strangely silent—perhaps she recognized that he could take care of the situation? Of course not.

He glanced down at her; she was staring at the two boys, eyes wide, lips slightly apart, her breath coming in little, startled gasps.

“Anathema?”

“But…but…” She shook her head, “they’re so young. But its them.”

Newt offered a soft elbow jab. “That’s not The Them; they’re too old. And there’s only two of them.”

“Not _that_ Them, the _other_ THEM.”

Newt had no idea what she was talking about.

Anathema blinked, trying to refocus the auras that shone brightly around the two approaching figures. There was no way any other two entities could have auras like what she was seeing. She’d never seen such auras ever before in her life; the colors swirled and mingled together, tendrils sweeping out in search of the other.

The other angel and demon that had showed up at Armageddon had had similar auras—the textures had been similar, but the colors muted. And those auras had shied away from each other.

These auras mixed.

Just like the two had mixed after Armageddon.

“What are you two doing here? Looking like that?” She raised her voice, unable to control the tremor that made it waver.

“What do you mean by that?” The red head recovered first, sauntering toward them, not bothering to look either way down the road.

The blond followed, looking in each direction three times before crossing, and continuously looking the whole time his feet touched pavement.

“Well,” Anathema waved her hand, indicating his body, “like that. Young. What are you playing at?”

“I’m not playing at anything.” The boy stopped and cocked his head. “Do I know you?”

Anathema narrowed her eyes, letting her gaze flit around those auras. Now that they were closer, the auras weren’t exactly what she remembered. They looked…contained was the only word she could think of to describe them; the tendrils reached out but were not able to grasp and knot with the other for any length of time. The color was subdued, too, as if someone had taken water and tried to wash out water-color paints.

“Maybe.” She licked her lips. “Are you okay?” She focused on the blond, who looked like he might faint. She nodded at him. “Is your friend hurt?”

The red head spun away to grab his friend’s arm. “Zira, what’s wrong?”

The blond took a deep breath in through his nose then whooshed it out his mouth. “Just breathing.”

“Right, you don’t like cars.”

A dull engine whine sounded in the distance.

“Zira, we gotta keep going. That’s got to be them, coming after us.”

The blond nodded and straightened. “Yes, of course.”

“Is someone chasing you?” Newt looked up the road, listening to the approaching car.

“Yeah.” The red head patted the blond on the shoulder.

Anathema pushed Newt toward the Toyota. “See if you can push it off the road. I’m going to take these two up to the cottage and make sure they’re okay. Then get back up there yourself.”

“R-right.” Newt jogged to the Toyota, reached in to put the engine in neutral, and pushed. It was slow going, and his feet slipped in the gravel, but it moved a little.

Anathema waved the boys to follow her, stooping to grab the basket and blanket. “Come on. Let’s get you out of sight, at least.”

They were a hundred feet away from the road and hidden by trees when they heard a whooping huzzah and a crashing sound, followed by the pounding of running feet and a gasping breath.

In just a couple of minutes, Newt joined then, a wide grin splitting his face. “Mission accomplished.”


	15. More Catalyst Event

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and this only adds to it.

They were well away from the road when they heard the other car pass. It didn’t stop, just kept going, and Tony relaxed and let a pent-up breath escape. He squeezed Zira’s hand, held tight in his own.

He stared at the back of the head of the young woman leading them away from the road. Her hair was dark and done up in a tight, neat bun. She seemed too confident in what she was doing, it made him nervous.

No one should be that confident in what they were doing.

Zira’s shaky breathing beside him drew his gaze to the face of his friend—what else could he call him? He was more than that but—and he grew worried. Zira was pale, so much paler than usual, and sweat marked the curls at his temples.

“S’okay, Zira. Everything will be okay.”

Zira nodded, but Tony didn’t think he really believed him.

They wound up a narrow path, crossing a near-dry stream and another wooded area before coming out at another lane with a story and a half cottage on the other side. It had a small garden enclosed by a fence and looked well lived in but well kept.

In other words, very different from the small cottage Ms. Potts and Mr. Shadwell lived in.

“Here we are. Let’s get inside and talk, shall we?” The young woman smiled back at them and opened the gate.

Tony let Zira walk, well, stumble might be the better word, through first, following close behind to offer the support of an arm around him once through.

“Your friend really doesn’t look too good.” The young man, who had followed at a discreet distance, stopped mid-close of the gate. “Did he hit his head in the sudden stop?”

“Zira?” Tony whispered, his stomach knotting at the thought that something had happened to Zira because of him.

Zira’s eyes fluttered, and he rested his head against Tony’s shoulder. “You can’t go in the cottage.”

“What do you mean?” Tony whispered back. “We can’t stay outside. What if they drive by? They’ll see us.”

“Horseshoe.” Zira pointed at the piece of shaped metal posted over the door to the cottage.

The young woman looked up. “It’s just decoration, like everything else nailed to the outside.”

Americans just didn’t understand ancient British protection spells.

Tony leaned close to Zira’s ear. “Its just an old wives ward, to keep evil out.”

Zira nodded, his cool forehead brushing Tony’s cheek. “Yeah, but…” He sighed.

So, Zira thought he was evil?

“What does it mean?” The young woman stepped toward them.

Tony shrugged. “It’s just a superstitious protection charm. To keep evil out and bad things away.”

“You mean, like…demons?” The woman cocked her head to the side.

“Yes.” Zira nodded again and tightened his hold on Tony. “Stay outside. Please? I’ll stay out here with you.”

“I’m not evil, ya know.” Tony wanted to pull away from Zira, but if he did, Zira would probably fall, and he wanted that less.

“I know.” Zira’s eyelids fluttered. “I-“

“Zira?” Tony tightened his grip on his friend and sank to his knees, taking Zira with him. “Zira, what’s wrong?”

Zira swayed on his knees, placing out one arm to brace himself. “I don’t…” He looked up at the horseshoe; the metal glowed red. Closing his eyes, Zira leaned into Tony, sighing against his neck. “Sorry…”

“Zira?” Panicked, Tony shook his friend, keeping it gentle to not hurt him.

The young woman knelt next to them, brushing Zira’s damp curls away from his temple and forehead. “I don’t see any bruising to show he bumped his head. Was he feeling okay earlier?”

“I think so…” But Tony wasn’t really sure. So much had happened since their time in the woods… “We were in the woods earlier, and he felt something there…but so did I…just different stuff.”

The young woman looked at him. “What did he feel?”

Tony frowned. What had Zira felt? “I thought the area felt tainted, but Zira said he felt like it had been cleansed.” He shrugged. The woman would probably think he was nuts.

The woman sighed and nodded. “That makes sense.”

“What?” Tony raised a brow at her.

“I suppose I should backtrack and introduce myself. My name is Anathema Device, and this is my fiancé Newton Pulsifer. I’m an occultist and he’s…well, he’s my fiancé and former Witch Finder.”

Tony glanced to the horseshoe. “An occultist? Isn’t that…like…a Satan-worshiper or something?” He didn’t need to ask what a witch finder was, but he was a bit surprised there was more than just Mr. Shadwell.

“Um, no.” Anathema sighed “Rather the opposite, to be honest. I helped you stop Armageddon. But I guess you don’t remember any of that.”

Shaking his head, tony pulled Zira closer, wrapping his arms around the unconscious boy. They had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.


	16. The Main Plot Gone Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Beelzebub realize their plan is not working...

Gabriel gripped the steering wheel, creeping the long silver automobile along the winding road. “Do you see them anywhere?”

In the passenger seat, Beelzebub snorted. “No.”

“I don’t understand why they ran away like that. There’s no way they figured anything out. If they had, Crowley would have confronted us.” Gabriel glanced at Beelzebub. “Right? I mean, you know him better than I do.”

Beelzebub sneered. “It soundzzz like how he would react. Insolent devil.”

Gabriel frowned. “Aren’t all devils insolent? I mean, aren’t they supposed to be?”

“Not to their superiorzzz they aren’t.” Beelzebub pressed his face to the glass in the door. “I can’t see anything out there. It’s too dark.”

Sighing, Gabriel pulled the car over to the side of the lane. “Let’s think this through for a bit. Is there anywhere they could have gone?”

“Like where?” Beelzebub turned in the seat to glare at angel. “They have no memoriezzz. They shouldn’t remember anywhere to go.”

“True, true.” Gabriel tapped the wheel with his fingertips, staring out the front glass. “Do you think anyone might have mentioned somewhere to them that they would decide was a good place to run away to?”

“I have no idea.” Beelzebub slapped the dash of the car. “I’m not familiar with Earth. I’ve been stuck running Hell for the past 6000 yearzzz.”

“What, like I know it any better? I’ve been in charge of Heaven. I mean, I’ve been down here,” he sneered, “but only as long as it took to reprimand Aziraphale and get back to work. Earth is…” He shuddered.

“Yes.” Beelzebub shivered. “It is…uncomfortable. A bit too clean and bright and airy.”

Gabriel snorted. “What are you talking about? It’s filthy. It smells. It’s crowded with people and animals and…stuff.”

Beelzebub shook his head. “Some of uzzz like smells.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Hmph.” Gabriel pulled the car back onto the road and continued creeping along. “Keep looking; they have to be around here somewhere.”

Beelzebub rolled his eyes but turned back to the window. There was nothing outside that he could see. There was faint movement, what he decided must be trees, but nothing that looked like the vehicle Gabriel had described or their demon and angel quarry.

He considered what Gabriel had said about how they’d driven off as they had. If Gabriel hadn’t jumped the gun and decided to visit the cottage without Beelzebub, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to get away.

It angered him, and he’d let Gabriel know it, but there was no sense in taking it out on the archangel yet. They needed to work together to find them—and separate them.

The longer the two were together, the higher the chance that they would start to remember.

Or not be miserable, as planned. They hadn’t looked that miserable earlier when they’d been spying on them in the garden. They’d looked quite happy and content to be honest.

And that was not how it was supposed to be.

“Anything yet?” Gabriel’s voice cut in.

“No.” Beelzebub snarled; maybe he should have punished Gabriel. His insufferable commanding was getting old “Why don’t you let me drive and you look?”

“What? Let you drive? We’d wind up crashed on the side of the road or over a cliff and discorporated.”

“How do you know that?” Beelzebub didn’t want to discorporate any more than the archangel did. It was a hassle under the best of circumstances, and discorporating while driving around with an angel would be the worst situation. He’d have to explain what they’d been doing, and why the rest of Hell had no idea that he was doing it.

“Have you ever driven a car before?” Something darted from the edge of the lane and Gabriel stamped his foot on the brake, screeching the tires and throwing Beelzebub forward in the seat. Since this had happened before, the demon had made certain to wear the seatbelt.

“Have you?” Beelzebub beat his fists against the dash. “This is useless. We’ll never find them. You never should have gone after them like that.”

“I was only going to take Aziraphale.” Gabriel sniffed and inched the car forward again.

“It seems that’zzz all it took to spook Crowley.”


	17. The Awakening Event

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Beelzebub aren't the only ones starting to figure things out.

Tony huddled with Zira, staring at the strange occultist and the young witch finder. Had they somehow hexed Zira, and that was why he was unconscious? They looked capable enough, and if anyone could hex someone, it would be an occultist and someone who looks for witches.

Zira groaned and stirred where Tony held him, but didn’t wake up. Tony tightened his grip. “Don’t worry, Zira, I’ve got you.”

“Does your friend faint often?” It was the man—what kind of name was Newt?—who spoke.

Tony frowned. “No, I don’t think so. This is the first I’ve seen him faint. Although, he doesn’t seem to do well in crowds.”

“There is no crowd here.” The woman—Anathema wasn’t much better of a name—commented, her eyes roving from Zira to Tony and back.

“No, and he’s not having a panic attack, he’s unconscious.” Tony leaned his head down, putting his cheek next to Zira’s lips, relaxing when he felt the faint dusting of breath from him.

Anathema frowned. “He had a panic attack in a crowd? Where? When?”

“Well,” Tony sighed, he really thought they needed to pay more attention to Zira’s faint, “Ms. Potts sent us off to a teen social, and there was a priest there lecturing on the evil wiles of teens…or something like that. I didn’t really pay much attention. And the punch was horrid—watered down and not very punchy, if you know what I mean. And then the music was loud and irritating and he got really pale…and we went outside for air.”

“When was this?” anathema inched closer, looking down at Zira.

“Last weekend. We convinced her it wasn’t the kind of thing either of us went for, so she didn’t force us to do anything social this weekend. We volunteered to work in the garden, and Mr. Shadwell-“

“Shadwell?” Newt broke in. “How is Mr. Shadwell involved in this?”

“You know Mr. Shadwell?” Tony narrowed his eyes at the tall man. Things were just a little too convenient for his liking.

“Of course, I do. He’s the one that brought me into the Witchfinder Army. He was a Sergeant.” Newt looked off in the distance. “Who’s this Ms. Potts? I don’t know her.”

“Well, according to Mr. Shadwell, she used to be a harlot—or a Jezebel, depending on his mood—if that helps.”

Zira stirred and shifted and pressed his cheek into Tony’s shoulder.

Tony looked down at his friend, brushing damp curls back from his sweating forehead. His breathing was regular, and a little color tinged his cheeks.

“A harlot?” Newt raised a brow. “I don’t suppose Potts could be Madame Tracey’s last name?”

“I don’t know about a Madame Tracey, but Ms. Potts’ first name is Margaret. Mr. Shadwell calls her Maggie and she makes little faces at him when he does. But he doesn’t seem to mind.” Tony sat back, adjusting Zira so that it was just his head that rested in his lap.

“Madame Tracey?” Anathema glared at Newt.

“You know Madame Tracy, she was the older woman there—and I know you know the ‘there’ I mean—with Mr. Shadwell and his big gun.”

“Mr. Shadwell had a gun?” Tony stared, blinking. He couldn’t imagine that scruffy man wielding any kind of weapon…or maybe he could. If he squinted and let his eyes unfocus, he could almost see it—along with Ms. Potts, only she had read hair and a bright jacket.

“Oh, yes. He was the de facto leader of the Witchfinder Army there in the end. It was just him and I, I think.” Newt scratched his head. “Had me cutting out newspaper articles.”

“Oh, I know all about that.” Tony nodded, having spent a few good evenings the past week cutting out articles and pasting them into scrapbooks. “With dull scissors, no less.”

“Oh, I had to bring my own scissors.” Newt puffed up a bit.

“I’m from Foster Care. I didn’t have scissors to bring.”

“Enough!” Anathema waved her hands about. “Let’s leave the cutting of articles aside for the moment. You said you’re from Foster Care?”

“Yes.” Tony stroked Zira’s head again when he tensed and groaned. The unconscious boy sighed and relaxed.

“How did you get into Foster Care? I mean, isn’t there paperwork or something?” Anathema frowned and paced back and forth in front of Newt.

“Yes. And the paperwork is funny, too. Zira and I have similar last names, and the same birth days. And the same man—big tall dark-haired jerk in a gray suit—brought us in. I don’t remember a lot before being shuffled into his car and taken to the Foster Care Office in London. Neither does Zira.”

“Tony, right? Is it short for Anthony?” Anathema stopped and pointed at him.

“No, the paper just says Tony, but I feel like it should be short for something like Anthony. It doesn’t feel right as it is.” Tony wrapped his arms tighter around his friend, hugging his closer.

“Zira—Aziraphale.”

“Hmm?” Zira sighed and fluttered his eyes. “What?”

“Aziraphale?” Anathema spoke the name louder.

“Yes?” Zira opened his eyes, only to close them again, taking in a deep breath.

“You are Arizaphale?” Anathema held her breath.

“Of course. Who else would I be? Michael?” Zira opened his eyes and kept them open. “Certainly not Gabriel.”

“Hey!” Tony grinned. “You’re awake. And that’s the name of the man that dropped us off.”

“What?” Zira turned his head and squinted up at Tony. “What…”—he blinked—“happened?”

“Well,” Anathema took a deep breath, “it looks like you and Crowley have been de-aged and your memories erased. Though, I’m hoping the fact that you answered yes to being Aziraphale, that maybe your memory is back?

Zira stared up at his friend. A part of him wanted to call him Tony, especially with the young face he wore. A deeper part of him, a part that was older and maybe wiser and who missed his natural eyes, wanted to call his Crowley.

But he suspected that this boy, this Crowley who looked so young, would not respond to that name.

“I feel much better now, Tony.” He sat up, stretching and rotating his neck. “The headache is gone completely now.”

“Well, I guess that’s good.” Tony edged himself away.

Zira wanted to pull him back, but wasn’t sure why Tony was moving away. He didn’t want to do the wrong thing; he did that far too often, and had pledged to do better.

Once Tony was far enough away, he pulled his knees up and rested his elbows on them. “So, you have your memories back? Like Anathema said?” His tone indicated he really didn’t believe anything the young woman had said.

“Yes, and no. I know who I am, though the memories are coming back slowly. It was a powerful miracle used to take memories away. Or a demonic curse, more like.”

“Angels and demons, miracles and curses, huh?” Tony scoffed.

Zira tilted his head, meeting his gaze, making his hold it. “You’re the one who called me ‘angel’ earlier. And, you started the Toyota without the key. It just started for you.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re an angel.” Tony dropped his gaze.

“Tony-“

“So, what is Gabriel, the guy that brought us to Foster Care?”

“An angel. Archangel, actually. The Archangel fu—well—the Archangel Gabriel.”

“Were you going to swear?” Tony nudged Zira’s foot with his own.

Zira sniffed. “Of course not. It was a phrase used once, by Gabriel himself, and I was just repeating it.”

Tony snickered. “Right.”

“There is a serious question here.” Anathema stomped a foot to get their attention. “Why would the angel in charge of heaven take you two to Foster Care without memories? In de-aged bodies? I mean, to what end?”

Newt shifted. “Well, I’ve heard horror stories about what happens to kids in Foster Care. Do you think he wanted you to be hurt?”

Zira thought a moment. “More than likely. This is repayment—punishment—of a sort for stopping Armageddon.”

“Stopping what?” Tony nudged again.

“Armageddon. You know, the end of the world. A great apocalypse. Earth destroyed and all of humanity wiped out.-“

“Okay, okay. I get it.” Tony sighed and shook his head. “And you really believe that you stopped Armageddon?” 

“Well, we weren’t alone.”

“We?” Tony prodded.

“You were there. Both of us, together, angel and demon-“

“So, I’m a demon?”

“Not a bad demon. You were an angel once, and really, even you said you had a slow fall rather than an abrupt one. How did you always describe it…sauntering downwards...”

Tony sneered.

“Look. We were both there. Anathema and Newt were there—they stopped World War III. Adam—that’s the anti-Christ—was there and he and his friends defeated the Four Horsemen. Then we had a little word with Adam when you stopped time-“

“Is that what happened?” Anathema gasped. “We all wondered.”

“Adam?” Tony scoffed and rolled his eyes. “The anti-Christ had a name like Adam?”

“-and then he confronted Lucifer—er, Satan, sorry—and told him he was no longer his father, and since reality was at his disposal at the time, it worked.”

“What worked?” Newt frowned. “I mean, I know whatever it was stopped Armageddon, but I’m not exactly following what it was that Adam did. Anathema and I have talked about it, and we weren’t able to get a true grasp on it.”

Zira sighed and slouched his shoulders. “Adam was in control of reality, and told Satan that he was not his father, and it was made so.”

Three pairs of eyes blinked.

“And so, Adam was no longer the anti-Christ. Thus, if he wasn’t the anti-Christ, then he couldn’t bring Armageddon, and Satan had to go back to Hell. And there was no possibility of war between Heaven and Hell.” Zira blinked and sighed. “And that is why Gabriel is upset enough to de-age us, erase our memories, and punish us with the human Foster Care system. Heaven really wanted that war.”

“Heaven wanted war?” Newt gasped. “I mean, I always thought-“

“Me, too, Mr. Pulsifer. Me, too.”

“This is all a bunch of rot!” Tony jumped to his feet, snorting, his cheeks flushed red. “Angels and demons and Armageddon. Ridiculous.”

Spinning away, he marched toward the cottage.

“No, don’t!” Zira hollered after him, staggering to his own feet to make chase, reaching out to grab an arm but missing, tripping, regaining his feet.

“You can’t stop me. I’ll prove to you it’s all a bunch of malarkey!” His foot touched the step.

The iron shoe glowed red.

Zira gasped and moaned. “No…”

The nail that held it in popped out, tinking to the stoop, followed by the shoe itself, which smacked Tony in the forehead, knocking him backward into Zira.

This time, it was Zira who did the catching.

“Argh!” Bugger all!” Tony clapped a hand to his head. “That bloody well hurt!” He sank to his knees, hands to his head.

“Let me see.” Zira tugged on his hands, leaning into his friend, trying to see how much damage had been done.

“Don’t hover, Angel. I’ll be fine.” Tony spat the words. “I don’tthink I;m bleeding.”

“What did you call me?” Zira’s voice escaped as a whisper.

Tony peeked between his hands, smirking. “You know right well what I called you. Sorry about that. Consider if you had no memory yet, and I’d tried to tell you that story. Would you have believed me?”

Aziraphale sighed, rolling to a hip, letting his head hang. “I suppose not. But-“ he smacked his friend’s shoulder, “if you’d listened harder and believed just a bit, you might not be in pain now.”

“True. But I wouldn’t have my memories back.” Tony looked to Anathema and Newt, then nodded to the horseshoe, still glowing amber, sizzling in a slight puddle under a rose bush. “Looks like I can enter your cottage now.”


	18. Supporting Characters Collude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alcohol...lots and lots of alcohol...at least for Anathema.

They sat at the kitchen table, drinking lemonade. Anathema refused to let the angel or the demon drink any kind of alcohol. Even though she knew them to be what they were, it just seemed wrong to let them drink spirits when they looked like kids.

“So, what now?” Newt made a face at his lemonade and eyed the side cabinet where the whiskey was kept.

“Well,” Zira let his thumb catch a drop of water that trailed down the side of this glass, “someone could call Mr. Shadwell and Ms. Potts and let them know we’re all right. They have no idea who we really are, and I’m sure they’re worried.”

“At least about what the Foster Care office will do when they’ve learned they lost us.” Tony snickered and downed his lemonade, eyeing the same cabinet as Newt.

Anathema sighed. “I’m sure Newt could call, and it wouldn’t be that suspicious—in case someone is at the cottage with them—but we don’t have their number.”

“That’s an easy fix.” Crowley lounged back in his chair, leaning in back on two legs. “I can give you the number.”

“But won’t someone question how I got it?” Newt sighed and pushed his lemonade away.

“Why would they?” Aziraphale leaned forward. “Gabriel and Beelzebub would have no reason not to think you’d have kept up with him.”

“Hmm.” Newt nodded. He stood and walked to the phone hanging on the wall. “Ok. What’s the number?”

Crowley rattled it off and Newt dialed. Everyone at the table could hear the ring on the other end.

“Hello?” It was Ms. Potts.

“Um, ahem, yes, ma’am, this is Newton Pulsifer. I’m a Witchfinder looking to speak with Sgt Shadwell.” Newt flushed.

“Oh, Mr. Pulsifer. How nice of you to call. I’ll just put Mr. S. on. Sorry, but we have a bit of company right now.” There was a loud clatter as the older woman set the receiver on a table and walked away to call to Mr. Shadwell.

“’Lo?” Mr. Shadwell grunted into the phone.

“Um, yes, well Sgt Shadwell, it’s Newton Pulsifer. One of your Witchfinder Recruits. Do you remember me? I helped you find the…um…nonwitch in Tadfield.” Newt winced.

Anathema shook her head, whispering to the room, “that old man will never figure anything out from that.”

“Ah, yes. Young Pulsifer. ‘ave ye found another witch te dispatch?”

“Well, no, not exactly. But I have found something new…young so to speak.”

“New?” Mr. Shadwell coughed and barked at the other end of the line. “Look, boy, I tole ye afore, it’s a Witchfinder Army. We find witches.”

“Yes, I know. You drilled that in quite well before my first assignment to Tadfield. But this it something else. Something you might be missing. Out on, so to speak.” Newt shrugged his shoulders and let them slump. He shook his head at the trio at the table.

“Huh. Something I may be missing, eh? Something, ah, new, ye said?”

“Yes, sir.”

e was a long pause, and it sounded like Mr. Shadwell was covering the mouthpiece. “Did you find two of ‘em?”

“Yes. And an old Toyota.” Newt whispered into the phone.

“Ah, weel. That’s alright then.” His voice boomed from the earpiece of the receiver. “Ye can keep that fer while fer me. I’ll come pick those…ah…witchfinder tools later. I’m kid of busy at the moment.”

“Oh, alright then. Yes.” Newt looked relieved and nodded into the mouthpiece. “I’ll keep them here until you can come get them.”

“That’s right. Nothing important enough fer me te come and git right away.”

Muffled conversation could be heard through the phone line.

Them Mr. Shadwell, again, but he didn’t seem to be addressing Newt. “No, thing wrong. Just an auld acquaintance that found some of me witchfinder memorabilia and wanted to let me know he had them in case I didn’t remember he had them.”

“Witchfinder memorabilia?” The muffled words were cold and clipped.

“Er, yes. I’d sent him off with a bell, candle, pin, and book. Fer his first assignment. He never came back so he still has them.”

“Very well. I think it’s time to hang up, though.”

“Er, yes, weel…” Mr. Shadwell’s voice boomed again. “A good day to ye, Mr. Pulsifer. I’ll come by to retrieve those things…later.”

“Yes, sir.” And Newt hung up the phone. “I think he understood me.”

“Are you sure?” Anathema raised a brow.

Newt shook his head. “Not really. But maybe.”

Newt broke out the whiskey and didn’t care that Anathema glared at him from behind her glasses when he poured for Crowley and Aziraphale, too. “They’re older than the two of us combined.”

“Hell,” chimed in Crowley, “we’re older than you two, and Mr. Shadwell and Madame Tracey combined, times ten.” And he downed his glass, coughing and sputtering when he choked and needed air.

Aziraphale took a small sip from his glass, swirling the liquid over his tongue and sighing when he swallowed.

Crowley stared at Aziraphale for a full thirty seconds before visibly shaking himself and looking away.

Anathema hid her snicker. The poor demon was so obvious. “I guess, it’s okay. But don’t let anyone see. We could get in trouble feeding liquor to minors. The authorities won’t accept that their absolutely ancient looking like that.”

The angel sighed. “At least our memories are back, now. We can at least protect ourselves, and the two of you. And Mr. Shadwell and Ms. Potts if we can get back to them.”

“You can’t go back!” Anathema slapped the table.

Newt poured her a finger of whiskey. She shot it back and took another.

“We must, dear girl. Don’t you see?” Aziraphale spun his half-full glass.” We can’t let them come to harm just because they took in what they thought were a couple of foster kids. They were trying their best, I think, under the circumstances.”

“They stuck us in the attic. In sleeping bags. On floor mats.”

Aziraphale stuck his chin out. “It could have been worse. It might have been fourteenth century hay in a loft.”

Crowley sneered. “I hate the fourteenth century.”

“I know, dear.” Aziraphale patted Crowley’s hand, and the demon sighed and stared at the angel.

Anathema shook her head. “Do you really think they’re in danger?”

“The Archangel fu-ahem…Archangel Gabriel is certainly more than capable of causing harm to a human. There are times I don’t understand why he didn’t fall with Lucifer, the way he talks about humanity.” Aziraphale took a drink of liquor.

“You just can’t let go of that can you. I tell it to you once, and that’s the part of that story you remember.” Crowley shook his head and tapped his glass for a refill.

“I’ve never heard his swear. I have trouble imagining it, to be perfectly honest.” Aziraphale sighed. “And I’d probably actually say it, but it seems wrong to let this young body spout such a word…so I cut it off.”

“I’ve never heard you swear, Angel.” Crowley only sipped his drink this time.

Anathema shot her next finger of alcohol, too, slamming the table with her glass.

Newt refilled it, bemused. He’d never seen anathema drunk before, and was starting to enjoy the spectacle.

Aziraphale jutted his chin out once more. “I can swear when it’s warranted. I fact, I’ve sworn in the recent past.”

“Oh?” Crowley leaned forward; his eyes were slowly turning snaky again. “When?”

“When I was discorporated, if you must know. It was rather a shock to step back into hat circle by accident and lift heavenward without preparing.”

“Dishcorrorated?” Anathema blinked at Aziraphale.

“Discorporated.” Aziraphale smiled. “It’s when an angel—or demon’s—earthly body is destroyed.”

“I’ve heard it’s unpleasant.” Crowley narrowed his gaze at the angel.

“Oh, indeed.” Aziraphale nodded with enthusiasm. “Quite unpleasant. That’s why I said “fuck”.”

“Hmmph.” Anathema waved a hand. “Not shure I...I…” she hiccoughed and burped, her face turning pink, “believe that.”

“Ask Mr. Shadwell. He was there.”

“Shadwell?” Crowley leaned back. “You never told me that.”

Aziraphale blinked at Crowley, turning that soft blue stare in his direction. “I guess it never came up.”

Anathema slumped forward, leaning her chin into a hand. She waved the other around vaguely. But said nothing.

“I think I’m going to put Anathema to bed.” Newt stood. His own glass of whiskey barely touched. “You too can take the upstairs bedroom. It has twin beds, at least, instead of floor mats.”

Newt got Anathema into a semi-standing position and let her lean into him.

“We can discuss this more in the morning, eh?” He shuffled backward, half-dragging the almost unconscious young woman with him.

“Of course.” Aziraphale stood, cleaning up the empty glasses, including Newt’s once Crowley took the opportunity to finish it off.


	19. The Obfuscation Ploy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More collusion...less alcohol...

Ms. Potts stared at the tall dark-haired representative from the Foster Care office. He was quite intimidating, staring down at her and Mr. Shadwell from that great height of his, using those clipped tones to censure them for doing nothing wrong.

“We didn’t know they’d try to run away like that.” She defended herself. “Shouldn’t your lot have warned us about that?”

The man—Mr. Archangel according to his identification card—narrowed his gaze and sneered. “It was in the paperwork.”

“I don’t remember reading it in the paperwork.” And she ought to know. She’d read the whole thing twice, even using the magnifying glass to make sure she didn’t miss any of the fine print on the bottom of the pages. “I distinctly remember it saying that the children placed in summer care were screened for things like running away and hooliganism and such. To make it better and easier for their temporary families.”

Mr. Archangel stared. “Really?”

She nodded. “Really. Would you like to look at the copy I kept?”

“No, no.” He waved a hand and looked out the window. “It seems my associate and your associate have decided to search the garage.”

“Not sure what your associate expects to find. The boys took the Toyota. We told you that. We saw them leave with it, remember?” Ms. Potts sniffed. She really didn’t like the looks of the associate—she’d missed the funny man’s name but it started with a B—and he had a faint odor of stale bread and soured honey about him. She was glad Mr. Shadwell had taken him outside after they’d made a quick search of the attic.

“You’re sure they didn’t mention to you any plan of running away together?”

Ms. Potts shook her head. “No. Once they explained that they didn’t want to go to the socials and such—and I said they didn’t have to go if they didn’t want to—they seemed much happier. I had no idea they’d bolt like that.”

Except…she had known as soon as she’d seen them skulking to the garage. And she couldn’t blame them. She’d wanted to run away herself when Mr. Archangel had shown up asking—demanding—to take poor Zira back because she couldn’t possibly have two Foster Care charges.

But she wasn’t going to mention that to this man. She rather thought he could be violent if he wanted, or if he was pushed to his limits, whatever those might be.

It might even be better to be outside searching for clues with the associate.

At least the associate was smaller.

Mr. Shadwell choked and coughed, blaming the dust in the garage instead of the steady odor of mold emitting from the short, slight bloke beside him.

“This izzz where the car was kept?” The man had a strange accent.

“Ahyup.” He nodded, trying to lean away without looking like he was leaning away..

“Where wazzz the key? In the automobile?” The short man raised a brow; at least that’s what Mr. Shadwell imagined. It was hard to see the man’s forehead beneath the dense shaggy mass that was the hair sticking out from beneath his beanie.

“Ooh, no. We kept the key in the kitchen, a-hanging next to the duur.” Mr. Shadwell nodded, like it was a well-understood thing that keys should not be kept in and automobile.

“And the boyzzz took the key from the kitchen?” The short man frowned.

“Ahhh…no. The key is still there.” Mr. Shadwell turned slightly and pointed in the direction of the back door. “I checked it as soon as they took off and it was still there, haning like anything.

“Then how did they start the automobile?”

Mr. Shadwell shrugged. “P’raps one of the boys knew how to hotwire it?”

“Hot wire?”

“Yes, ye know, when ye take the wires in the steering column and splice them together to bypass the starter lock so that you give direct and constant power to the engine.” Mr. Shadwell sounded like he might know just a little more than he liked to admit about hotwiring starters.

The short associate pushed his hair back, glaring around at the clutter. “How do you find anything in here?”

“Ah, weel, there’s a lot of junk left from the previous owner still, and that’s a project I’ve been working on with the boys. Ye should have seen it afore we started.” Mr. Shadwell thought his garage looked more put together than the gentleman beside him, but said nothing. He just wanted the man to finish his look-around and leave.

It was getting dark. Mr. Shadwell was hungry. Maggie hadn’t been able to make anything for their supper yet, and he’d spent the entire evening escorting this short buzzy bloke around everywhere while he looked for something to tell him where the boys might have gone.

They usually ate their meal after dark. That left the most light for getting stuff done, but this was getting to be a bit much. At this rate, they’d be eating their breakfast afore they got to tonight’s supper.


	20. The Plotters get Worried

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel is reminded that demons will be...well, demons.

“I think they’re hiding something.” Gabriel stood outside the small cottage, in the narrow lane, obscured from anyone’s view who might glance in his direction. “I think they know something, but they just won’t tell us.”

“I think they’re too stupid to know anything.” Beelzebub was similarly obscured. He sighed. “We’ve lost them for good. We never should have canceled their aurazzz so that other angelzzz and demonzzz couldn’t find them.”

“It was the best idea at the time. If anyone else had found them de-aged and in the human Foster Care system, there would have been questions. Michael is getting uppity and a few angels are starting to follow her lead. I couldn’t afford Michael finding out about this plan.”

“Can you imagine if Hazzztur found out?”

Gabriel stared at Beelzebub. He could only assume Hastur was one of Satan’s demons, possibly a powerful one if Beelzebub was worried about him. Demons were not his concern, so he never paid much attention to them, unless it was Beelzebub hatching a plan of retribution—no…punishment.

“There was that strange phone call, too.” Beelzebub picked at a scab on the back of their hand. “What wazzz that about again? Witch hunterzzz?”

“Witch Finders. It seems that old man was one of their ranks at some point, and a recruit went on assignment. Still had some of their equipment and wanted to return it.”

“What’zzz a witch finder?”

“No idea.” Gabriel shook his head, already dismissing the conversation—current and the one he; d overheard. “I doubt it’s important.”

Beelzebub sighed. “I found nothing in the attic. All their clothing was still there, except what they were wearing. Ms. Pottzzz swore she hadn’t gotten them anything new, so it’s all there.”

Gabriel nodded. “There was nothing to indicate any kind of runaway plot in the house, either. Just a bunch of papers the old man had been having them cut out of newspapers.” He shook his head. He would never understand how human’s thought. “Perhaps it was just the ridiculous monotony of cutting out newspaper articles that made them snap and run away?”

Beelzebub sniffed and shook his head. “The garage had nothing, either. Although, I did find out that they didn’t use a key to start the automobile. Mr. Shadwell said something about one of the boyzzz knowing how to wire hot one to bypazzz the startup.”

“The what?” Gabriel stared at Beelzebub. The demon had lost him once he’d started talking about a wire.

“He made the car go without the key.” Beelzebub snorted. “Pay attention. How are we to adequately share information if you aren’t paying attention?”

Gabriel thought it might be easier to pay attention if he understood what the Heaven the demon was talking about.

Beelzebub sneered. They never should have trusted the angel. It was bad enough Crowley had misplaced the anti-Christ last summer, leading to only an almost-apocalypse and a near-rebellion from the demons that wanted to go to war but couldn’t. They were all still lusting for a fight, and Beelzebub didn’t want to be what they all fought with.

And now, here they were—him and an archangel—the most powerful archangel if you were to believe Gabriel—having worked together to punish the angel and demon who’d betrayed both sides, and the angel had let them get away.

Most powerful their ass. The most powerful archangel wouldn’t have lost a couple of human boys—and that’s all Crowley and Aziraphale were now. They had no knowledge of their origins or that they had power at their fingertips.

Beelzebub never should have agreed to help.

“So, what now? How do we proceed? I have a meeting tomorrow with all the Dukezzz of Hell to brainstorm wayzzz to make Crowley pay. I was hoping to regale them with the tale of how I’d already done it.”

They’d figured a few would be upset that they hadn’t been in on the plot, but that once they’d been able to describe the pain and torture Crowley was suffering as a Foster Care ward in a faulty human system, they’d be pleased. And since Crowley would still have been in that system, they could take turns to come up and watch him suffer even more.

“What do you mean you were going to tell them?” Gabriel rounded on the demon. “We were keeping this hush-hush.”

“Not forever, we weren’t.” Beelzebub narrowed his gaze, giving the archangel a cold, dead glare. “You were the one complaining about Heaven finding out you got your handzzz dirty. Demonzzz are proud to sully themselves in the name of plot and pain and making someone mizzzerable.”

Gabriel reeled back. “But…but…we agreed?”

“I’m a demon; our agreements can’t be trusted. You should know that.” Beelzebub almost felt sorry for the archangel, he looked so distraught. “But don’t worry, I can’t tell anyone yet. I can’t tell anyone in Hell unless it’s a success.”


	21. The Rising Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pair awaken...literally, from sleep...

Aziraphale waited for the first beams of light to creep through the curtains before turning over to whisper at Crowley, “you awake?”

The demon sighed. “Yeah. Been running through shit in my head all night. Trying to put everything in place. Damn Beelzebub.” The creak of bed spring indicated he’d shifted.

“Yes. I’m rather surprised—I’m not sure what other word to use—about Gabriel’s involvement in this. With Beelzebub. After all his harping about not consorting with demons…” Aziraphale huffed and sat up. “I don’t think it’s good to stay here.”

Crowley sat up, too, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Yeah. Bit dangerous for Anathema and Newt if Beelzebub finds us here. I can’t imagine—or rather, I can, but would rather not—what he’d do to them for helping us.”

Standing, Aziraphale stretched. It was strange, this younger body, and now he knew it. That was one of the things that had been bothering him before his memory had returned. His body hadn’t felt like his own, not really. It was, his, as his brain was part of it and humanity hadn’t figured out how to move brains from one body to another, and yet it wasn’t as familiar as he thought a body should be.

He caught Crowley starting.

“What?”

Crowley shook himself and stood. “Nothing.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “It didn’t look like nothing.”

Closing his eyes, Crowley let his head hang a moment, then rolled his neck to look at the angel. “It’s hard to see you in there. It’s you, but it isn’t.”

“Well, I’m not as soft.” Aziraphale raised his chin. That was still a sore spot for him, that the angels in Heaven saw it as a flaw that could not be redeemed.

“No, but…” Crowley shrugged. “I miss you as you were.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale frowned and concentrated. He couldn’t bring his familiar body back. He sighed, long and hard. “There’s nothing I can do about it. Whatever miracle Gabriel used, I can’t undo it.”

The pair stood for a moment, silent, each thinking private thoughts.

“I miss your eyes.” Aziraphale spoke the words in a hush, reaching out a hand to stroke gentle fingers down Crowley’s cheek.

“Really?” Crowley stared a moment.

“Yes.”

“Rather obvious tell that I’m a demon.”

“Nothing to be ashamed about.”

Crowley raised a brow.

“Well…it isn’t. Not really. God made the call that angels would fall, and not every angel that fell did it for the same reason. I mean, Lucifer was the crux of it, his refusal to accept humanity and care for them. But some, I mean…you’ve said you just asked questions.” Aziraphale looked away. “It’s not like you’ve really done anything much worse that what I’ve done.”

“Angel…”

“And we should get going before Anathema and Newt wake up and make it more difficult than it has to be.” Aziraphale marched to the door, opening it and disappearing into the dim hall beyond.

Crowley watched his angel leave. While the younger body was nice to look at, he liked looking at an older Aziraphale just as much. The Aziraphale he’d known for over 6000 years—or at least the body that Aziraphale had lived in all that time—had crinkles when he smiled and lines when he frowned and Crowley…missed them. Those crinkles and lines helped him interpret what his angel was thinking and feeling and let him know when he’d said something, unthinking, that hurt him.

So, he could try to make it better.

And now, he thought maybe he’d done something to make Aziraphale feel bad, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the signs to look for, and had to go by instinct alone, and he wasn’t very good at that.

It was like that first time they’d spoken, on the garden wall, and he’d almost blown it. That conversation. He’d been trying so hard to impress him, that he’d criticized him and hurt him. He’d been able to make it better then, but had made so many similar faux pas over the centuries…he’d blown more second chances than he should have ever been given.

But somehow, Aziraphale had forgiven him—he always did, as angels were supposed to do but Heaven seemed to have forgotten—and he’d learned to take care with his angel.

He didn’t want to muck up the last 6000 years of friendship and the final blossoming of something more—just because he was too dense to know when he’d mucked up.

The stairs creaked beneath his feet, even though he tried his best to tiptoe and keep silent. He found Aziraphale, standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking around like he wasn’t sure what to do.

The angel glanced at Crowley. “Should we leave a note?”

“Probably for the best.” Crowley helped Aziraphale find paper and pen and let the angel write the note. Aziraphale’s handwriting was so much better than his own, even if it was a tad flowery.

It suited his angel.

Once outside, they made their way down the hidden path to the far lane and stared into the ditch at the crumpled old Toyota.

“I don’t think I can fix that.” Crowley waved a hand. “My demonic powers aren’t responding the way they should. I think part of what was done to us is suppressing them somehow.”

“Mmhmm.” Aziraphale agreed. “Looks like we walk.”

“In which direction?” Crowley looked both ways up the lane. “Do we go back to the cottage or keep running?”

Aziraphale stared at him, the look intense enough that it made Crowley wonder if there was something on his chin. Then, finally, the angel whispered, “I don’t know.”


	22. Even More Supporting Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally get to write about The Them.

The ding of a bicycle bell, followed by a trill of answering bells, echoed down the lane.

Four bicycles, pedal-powered by four pairs of twelve-year-old feet, careened around the corner, laughter ringing out in time with the bells.

Adam was in the lead, but only because he’d started out first. Dog was in his bicycle basket, tongue lolling, nose raised to sniff the fresh morning air.

Pepper was right behind, having passed Brian and Wensleydale easily.

Wensleydale was doing his best to keep up.

Brian was desperate to pass at least Pepper, though he’d be elated to pass Adam, too.

The Them were on their way to the wood for a morning adventure. There was word that there had been a car off the road the evening before, and they hoped to find the wreckage. No one had said anything about passengers being hurt, so they figured it was alright to go looking for what was left.

They’d made a bet before starting off. Adam thought maybe it had rolled, like Dick Turpin had last summer, but that it hadn’t blown up, since no one had mentioned an explosion or fire. Pepper and Brian had decided it must have blown up; the only other accident they’d ever seen was when Dick Turpin had done its thing last summer, and every car accident on the telly either blew up—Brian had cited several action movies in his logic—or the news had talked about the danger of an explosion—Pepper had widely cited actual accidents instead of fiction. Wensleydale had hedged his bets that it had only run off the road.

The four bicycles halted beside two teens peering off over an embankment.

“Wotcher lookin’ at?” Adam spoke first, of course. He always did. He always asked the best and most pertinent questions.

“Our car.” The red head spoke, cocking his head to the side to stare.

“Is that the one that went off the road last night?” Wensleydale took the opportunity to establish that he’d been correct in his assumption about the accident last evening.

“Not sure it was _the_ one that went off the road, but yes. It is off the road and in the ditch.” Aziraphale pointed.

Six pairs of eyes peered down.

“I don’t suppose it blew up?” Brian asked, though he didn’t sound too hopeful of get a yes.

“No, I’m sorry.” Aziraphale shook his head.

“Figures.” Pepper sighed. “Why did Wensleydale have to be the one that’s right?”

Adam chuckled. “One of us was bound to be right, and the others would be wrong.”

“Still.” Pepper growled. She hated being wrong, especially to Wensleydale. He always decided on the simplest, the easiest, the least exciting of whatever they had to make a decision about. She supposed someone had to, but still…it annoyed her at times.

Brian shrugged. “Well, it’s pretty far off the road and looks pretty dented up. Looks like it could have blown up if just a little bit more had happened to it. Maybe it only didn’t because it didn’t flip over and over.”

“Perhaps.” Crowley looked from one to the other and then at Aziraphale. “Um, Angel…you notice anything?” He waved at The Them.

Adam narrowed his eyes and focused on the two teens. There was something about them…if he could just see their auras, maybe…“Hey! I know you!” He grinned.

Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale stared at Adam.

Crowley and Aziraphale stared, too, but they didn’t look quite as surprised. After all, they recognized Adam. They just hadn’t expected the former Anti-Christ to recognize them.

“What’s with the different bodies?” Adam set his bike stand down and stood up. “Younger, eh?”

“Um…yes.” Aziraphale glanced to Adam’s friends.

“Oh, don’t worry about them.” Adam waved at the three Them that weren’t him. “They’ll be okay. No one listens to anything we say anyway.”

Crowley nodded. “Okay.”

“No, Crowley. It isn’t okay.” Aziraphale admonished. “We just left the cottage to keep Anathema and Newt safe; we can’t put these children in danger now. Which,” the angel raised a finger, “brings me to the answer of your earlier question—we go away from Ms. Potts and Mr. Shadwell. No sense putting them in any more danger, either.”

“He’s the anti-Christ!”

“Former anti-Christ. He changed all that, remember? Saved the world?” Aziraphale shot Crowley and sharp look.

“Mphh.” Crowley growled and kicked at a pebble.

“Well,” Adam glanced at his friends, who’d all dropped their bottom lips to form astonished “o”s with their mouths. “Maybe there’s things we shouldn’t’ talk about.”

Pepper sputtered a moment before spitting out her words. “You mean all of that was real? Last summer? Mum told me I’d been daydreaming or something.”

Wensleydale nodded; his mouth still gaping.

Brian managed to close his mouth and swallow, but said nothing.

Adam nodded. “Yeah. It was real.”

Aziraphale stuck his nose up, taking a great whoosh of air. “You should all be immensely proud of yourselves. I saw what you did, facing off again War and Famine and Pollution like that. You showed the best of humanity with that bit of bravery last summer.”

The three Them that were not Adam blinked. Only Pepper managed to say, “thanks.”

“So,” Adam tried again, waving at Crowley and Aziraphale, “what happened? If you looked like yourselves again, my friends would probably recognize you.”

Crowley groaned. “We aren’t sure. But it has to do with a Dike of Hell and an archangel taking our memories, making us young, and sticking us in the Foster Care system.”

Wensleydale found his voice. “Why would someone do that?”

“Well,” Aziraphale cleared his throat and twisted his fingers together, “Heaven and Hell rather wanted Armageddon to happen, and we helped you four stop it.”

“I don’t remember you.” Pepper glared.

“You would if they looked like themselves. Do you want to look like yourselves again?” Adam grinned.

“Oh, that would be wonderful.” Crowley tried to crack his neck, but his young body just didn’t have the stiffness he was used to. “But-“

And then, they were themselves again. Even Crowley’s eyes were back to the yellow demon slits.

“Uh-“

And then, he had his dark glasses, too.

“Thanks.” Crowley nodded to Adam and adjusted the lenses across his nose.

Aziraphale smiled at Crowley, his eyes crinkling.

The three Them that weren’t Adam gasped as one. “You!”

Yes—they did indeed recognize the angel and the demon in their regular bodies.


	23. After the Magical Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, not that magical moment...The Them need an explanation.

Pepper frowned at Aziraphale. “But why were you younger? I recognize you now.”

Aziraphale considered how much to explain, especially considering how much would be conjecture without true facts and decided The Them were perfectly capable of understanding everything. After all, they’d been instrumental in saving the world.

“Last summer-”

Crowley cleared his throat. “Angel, they were there last summer.”

“Yes darling, I know. Please let me continue.” But there was no heat in Aziraphale’s words.

Shrugging, Crowley watched him, the faintest of smiles on his lips.

“When you saved the world last summer, there was another angel there—tall and dressed in gray, very stiff—as well as another demon—short, dark scruffy hair, silly hat. They spoke to Adam in the end, telling him to restart Armageddon so Heaven and Hell could have their war. They were the ones that—well, the demon, anyway—the one that told Satan what he’d done and…well, you know the rest.”

The Them, even Adam, nodded.

“Well, those two aren’t happy with Crowley and me, seeing as we did a lot to try to stop Armageddon, too, and decided to make us younger, take our memories, and put us in Foster Care. I surmise they meant to make it some sort of punishment.” But he tone of voice said he had no idea how it was supposed to be a punishment.

Wensleydale gasped. “I’ve heard horrible stories of what can happen to kids in Foster Care. Was it really that bad?”

Crowley raised a brow, the dark line only barely visible above the dark lens that hid his amber eyes. “How bad were you told it can be?”

“Crowley, really, they are children.” Aziraphale swatted the demon’s shoulder.

“He asked.” But Crowley didn’t seem to mind the gentle tap.

“Yes, but-” Aziraphale shook his head and let out a long sigh. “Anyways, we figure it was meant to punish us, but we weren’t supposed to be placed together, but we were.”

“How do you know that?” Pepper frowned and leaned her head to one side. “I mean, did they say that?”

“Well, no. At least, not to us.” Aziraphale took a deep breath. “But, when we were at Ms. Potts’ cottage, Gabriel—that’s the archangel by the way—showed up trying to take me away and talking all about how Ms. Potts—she was there at Armageddon, too—shouldn’t have been given two Foster Care wards.”

“Mmph.” Crowley shifted, shoving his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “Lord Beelzebub was there at the cottage, too. Then, when we managed to run away, they followed us…together.”

“Is that really that odd?” Brian wrinkled his nose. “I mean, you’re an angel and a demon, and you hang out together.”

Aziraphale raised a finger, wagging it, pointing it at the sky, and his mouth moved like he was trying to make words…but no sound came out.

“We’re…” Crowley shrugged and swiveled his body right to left and back, “well, we’re different. We became friends a long time ago, and sort of, helped each other out instead of antagonizing each other.”

Blinking, Aziraphale gave Crowley a long look.

“Ok, let me amend that to we didn’t antagonize each other on purpose.” He raised a brow at the angel. “That better?”

“Much.”

Crowley watched his favorite angel explain their situation to The Them. This was the Aziraphale he preferred: soft, gentle, smiling. Not that the younger version hadn’t smiled or been gentle—although that younger Aziraphale had kissed him, and this one had never—but the softness had been sharper and his anxiety had been exaggerated—probably a physical reaction to what he intuitively knew was a wrong body.

Ever since Armageddon had been thwarted, and Aziraphale had decided he and Crowley had been on their own side along with humanity, the angel’s anxiety had been much eased.

“So, then, we ended up here, in much similar predicament we’ve been in before, having almost had an accident. Miss Device—she and Mr. Pulsifer haven’t married yet have they?—Adam and the Them all shook their heads—recognized us, probably by our auras, and took us up to her cottage, where the protective spells broke through the miracle that took away our memories, and we knew who we were again.”

Adam scratched his head. “Protective spells?”

“Well,” Crowley decided he really ought to do some of the telling, “there was the horseshoe over the door that knocked me out when it fell and the spell on it collapsed. There was also a couple of witche’s balls hanging in the garden that likely helped concentrate the spell. Most likely, those are what reversed Aziraphale’s memory loss, and the horseshoe worked on mine.”

“I didn’t know there was protective spells at Jasmine Cottage.” Adam set his hands on his hips. “She never mentioned anything about that when she explained ley lines and dangerous nuclear reactors and the clubbing of baby seals to me.”

Shrugging, Crowley pursed his lips and considered. “She probably never thought about it.”

Aziraphale giggled. “Being an American, she might not have even recognized them for what they were.”

That was as likely a reason as any other. Americans had made a history of ditching any good information the British had.

“True. Smart girl though. Likes to read.” Crowley nodded like anyone who read books must be very, very smart. He thought Aziraphale to be the smartest being he knew, and his angel read lots of books.

“I like to read.” Wensleydale declared.

“The stock exchange isn’t considered reading, Wensleydale.” Pepper snorted. “He means book reading, like Anathema does. Great big thick books with leather covers that are starting to fall apart.”

“I read, too, you know.” Brian picked at something on his arm.

“Comics don’t count, either.” Pepper shook her head.

“Nothing wrong with newspapers and comics and magazines.” Adam piped up; everyone listened. “Any reading can make you smarter, just a different kind of smart.”

“How many kinds of smart are there, then?” Pepper blinked at Adam and cocked a hip out, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Lots and lots of kinds. There areas many kinds of smart as there are things to read.” Adam stared Pepper down. “Then there’s the kinds of smart that have nothing to do with reading, like painting and drawing and maths.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “Hard to learn some of that stuff without reading.”

“Well, yeah. But it isn’t the reading that makes you smart, it’s the doing of the smart stuff.” Adam’s tone indicated that he thought the conversation was over.

“But, you learn the stuff by reading about it.” Pepper wasn’t done.

“Yeah, but-”

“Ahem.” Crowley broke in. “Love to stay and chat, but Angel and I need to make a move on before Gabriel and Beelzebub figure out where we are. While we got our memories back yesterday and now our old bodies back, we’re still a little hampered in the miracling department.” He grinned and tucked a hand into Aziraphale’s elbow to lead him up the lane, away from where’d they come from.

“Hmmm.” Adam narrowed his eyes at him. “Not sure if it’ll help, but your auras look muted, like something is pressing them down into your bodies. Last summer, your auras were spreading out an’ now they aren’t. That’s probably what’s keeping you from to making miracles an’ stuff.”

The three Them that weren’t Adam shrugged and nodded, like they knew exactly what Adam was talking about.

“Right, well, thanks for the info. But we need to go. It’s a long walk to London.” Crowley tugged on Aziraphale’s arm. There might be something in the bookshop that could help them get their abilities back. But they had to get there first, then scour the shelves and back rooms looking for something old and true enough that would have something worthwhile in it.


	24. The Main Character's Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pair need to figure out some things.

The Them offered Crowley and Aziraphale their bicycles, but both the demon and the angel winced at the thought of riding the contraptions all the way to London and enthusiastically declined. The Them shrugged and offered to ride with the pair for a bit—just for company—but Crowley grimaced and Aziraphale suggested it might not be the best idea.

“Parents, and all.” The angel smiled—a genuine upturn of the lips—to take the blunt off the refusal, and The Them had shrugged again and pedaled off.

“Right then. Here we go.” Crowley sniffed, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and started off.

Aziraphale looked down into the ravine at the old Toyota. “You don’t suppose we could-”

“Heaven and Hell would know if we did. And then they’d find us soon after. I think we need to get to London first.” Crowley looked at Aziraphale from behind his lenses.

The angel looked tired, and Crowley wondered if he’d truly recovered from their ordeal. Maybe they needed to find somewhere local to lie low and rest up.

“Yes, yes, of course. London.” Aziraphale nodded and stepped off, following Crowley. “London. So far away.”

“Yes, but each step puts us closer.” Crowley understood Aziraphale’s trepidation. London was a long way from Tadfield. “So, we can talk while we walk.”

“Talk? What about?” Aziraphale sighed and flapped his jacket before taking it off and folding it over one arm.

Crowley took the jacket from the angel and set it over his own arm. “Well, we could talk about anything, really. What we plan to do when we get to London. What we plan to do to Gabriel and Beelzebub when we catch up to them. What we plant o tell Heaven and Hell when we’ve done whatever it is we’re going to do to Gabriel and Beelzebub.”

“Very well. What will we do when we get to London?” Aziraphale blinked his blue-gray eyes at the demon.

“Well…” Crowley grunted, “I suppose we need to figure out what happened to our miracling abilities. I mean, what exactly did Gabriel and Beelzie do to us? We know they de-aged us and took our memories. What else did they do?”

Aziraphale frowned, his fingers twisting together, pulling at each other.

Crowley reached over with his free hand and took one of Aziraphale’s in it, tugging it away to twine his fingers through the angel’s. “Don’t worry so much, Angel. We’ll figure it out.”

“But how?” Aziraphale gripped Crowley’s hand. “I didn’t even know it was possible to perform a miracle like that.”

“Maybe…we need to figure out who did what. You know, which part Gabriel did and which part Beelzie did.”

“Hmm.” Aziraphale nodded. “I would think the de-aging was the more angelic bit, right? So that was probably Gabriel.”

Crowley raised a brow. That actually made sense. “So, if that’s true, then the memory erasing was done by Beelzie.”

“I would think doing something that strong, that permanent since we were de-aged without our memories for quite a while, would have drained them of energy. At least for a while.”

“Hmm.” Crowley nodded. “In that case, they probably didn’t do anything else to us, unless someone else was helping them out.”

“Another demon?”

“Or another angel.”

Aziraphale thought a moment. “I think they’re working on their own. Just the two of them. If they had more help, it would be more than just the two of them looking for us.”

“You really think that?” Crowley kicked a pebble down the lane in front of them.

“I can’t imagine Michael letting Gabriel do anything like this alone. Or at least, without Michael right there, watching. She’s a little, shall we say, untrusting.”

“Hmm. I suppose. And if some lesser demon were involved, Beelzie wouldn’t be here doing anything. They don’t like coming to Earth.” Crowley rolled his eyes.

Licking dry lips, Aziraphale pondered a moment. “How do you think they did it? Got together to discuss anything like this plan of theirs. I can’t imagine it was spur of the moment.”

“No, no.” Sniffing, Crowley stared at Aziraphale. “They had to have plotted. This scheme just doesn’t seem like something ole Beelzie could come up with.”

“Indeed. There is a definite taint of Gabriel’s cruelty in this.” Aziraphale sighed and looked off into a field. There were sheep and cows grazing, the morning mist still hugging the grass in places. The animals shuffled, snuffling the grass, nosing it around before biting off the tender tops. The angel stopped to watch.

“You know, we are in a bit of a hurry, Angel.” But Crowley only stopped next to his friend to watch the animals with him.

“Crowley, do you ever wish for a simpler life?”

“Simpler? You mean, like living in Alpha Centauri?” The demon nudged Aziraphale’s elbow.

“Alpha Centauri?” Aziraphale raised his chin. “I can’t imagine that would have been simple at all.”

“Might have been simpler than this.” Crowley nudged Aziraphale again, and the angel turned to look at him.

“Do you really think so? Whoever won the war would have come looking for us. That could have been complicated, keeping in hiding where there is no where to hide.” Aziraphale turned to confront Crowley.

“That war would have gone on for centuries, Angel. Maybe longer. The forces of Heaven and Hell are pretty evenly matched.”

“Hmph.” The angel marched off down the lane, keeping a steady trot ahead of Crowley.

Skipping, Crowley managed to catch up and hook his fingers around Aziraphale’s arm. “Angel, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Angels would have died in that war. Demons, too. Humanity would have been destroyed. The entire Earth gone. Nothing at all simple about that.” Aziraphale didn’t deign to look in Crowley’s direction. How dare he suggest Armageddon would have been simple?

“It would have been a bloody mess here.” Crowley tugged on Aziraphale’s arm. “But not at Alpha Centauri.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips together. He didn’t like this conversation. It reminded him that there was a big difference between how he thought and how Crowley thought.

“Hey, you’re the one that brought up wanting something simpler.” Crowley let go of Aziraphale’s arm.

“Yes, but-”

“But?” Crowley kicked another pebble and it skittered across the pavement.

“-but I meant, simpler like being truly human, and not angel or demon. Rather like we were when we’d been de-aged with no memories.” Aziraphale felt a faint blush fill his cheeks. “I didn’t have to worry about all of Heaven or Hell coming after me, not even Gabriel and Beelzebub. Well, not after me like I worry now.”

“Angel, it might have been less worrying, but only because we didn’t know. Horrible things were waiting for us, we just had no knowledge of them.” Crowley sighed. “Gabriel and Beelzie were still out for us. I’d rather know. I can’t protect you if I don’t know where the danger is.”

Aziraphale blinked, and then, a moment later, nodded. “I suppose, it’s just…” how could he explain that he wanted to kiss Crowley? That now, with all the complications of _knowing_, it didn’t seem appropriate anymore? Younger, without all the _knowledge_, it had been fine to want to kiss, to actually kiss, to want even more. But now…they were back to angel and demon, too different to do anything much but bicker.

And Crowley was reminding Aziraphale just how different they were. Everything was complicated again.

“It’s alright, Angel. Let’s get to London. I’m sure we’ll work everything out.” Crowley took his hand and tugged. “In London, I can see them coming and stop whatever they plan to do. In London, I can protect you.”

Aziraphale watched Crowley’s profile as they walked, silent. And he thought” protect. Crowley wanted to protect him?

How odd—and it made Aziraphale want to laugh. A protector being protected? By a demon?


	25. The Unraveling Plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poor Gabriel and Beelzebub.

Lord Beelzebub sneered at the lesser demon standing before them. “You dare to question where I’ve been?”  
“No, Your Excellency, Sir. It’s just, Duke Hastur has been asking me, and I wondered what I should tell him when he asks again.” The demon quivered and shook, its knees starting to bend to prostrate itself.  
Beelzebub scowled. It figured that Hastur would be asking questions. That demon needed something more to occupy his time. Something foul and hard and far, far away from Beelzebub.  
“You may tell him I’ve been performing our Master’s bidding. Something super-secret that only I can know about until it is done.” Beelzebub adjusted their hat, preening the fly wings into a more symmetrical position.  
“Our Master has bid you to do something?”  
“Again! Why are you questioning me? I am in charge here, not you, or Hastur, or anyone but Lord Satan.” Beelzebub leaned close enough for their spit to track along the demon’s dirty cheek. “Now run along and find something nasty to do.”  
The demon skittered away, head bowed, hands gripped together in a tight clasp at their waist.   
Beelzebub knew the demon would be heading straight for Hastur, letting the Duke know that Beelzebub was back and not explaining what they were doing. The one thing Beelzebub hated most about Hell was that no one trusted anyone. A demon couldn’t burp without another demon wondering if it had been directed at them or if it meant something horrible or nasty was going to happen.  
And while on the one hand, it was expected, after all they were demons, it was frustrating when trying to accomplish something. The whys and whens and hows could become a cacophony of questions not even Satan could answer.  
And the Fallen One would never answer any question.  
Sighing, Beelzebub sank onto their throne, scooting back, sticking out their feet to examine the toes of their shoes, pouting.   
They’d lost the angel and the demon, and Gabriel was being a total putz about the whole thing. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen. No one has to know; not in Heaven nor in Hell.   
And while Beelzebub knew that no one would be asking Crowley or Aziraphale if anything untoward had happened to them—no one had reason to, after all—there was a distinct worry that together, the pair could come after Beelzebub and Gabriel, and since they had defeated the power of Holy Water and Hell Fire, who knew what they were capable of now?

Gabriel swallowed nervously and strode through the grand hall to his office. He didn’t want anyone wondering why he wasn’t already in it. His usual business hours—going over files and accounts and handling disgruntled angels—were from dawn until mid-afternoon, and it was only lunch hour on Earth now.  
He shouldn’t be out.  
Michael paused down the hall, staring. “Gabriel?”  
Gabriel didn’t stop, but stepped up his pace. If he could just get through the door before-  
Michael grabbed his elbow. “I thought you were going over the Earth observation files. You know, to try to determine just how Aziraphale managed to survive that brush with Hell Fire?” The second-in-charge Archangel cocked her head to one side and raised a brow, the glitter on her cheeks shimmering in the bright light.  
“I was. But I was needed for something else.” Gabriel edged toward the door and safety.  
“Like what? No one mentioned anything to me.” Michael tugged, stopping the archangel from making any headway. “Sandalphon knows to inform both of us if something goes amiss.”  
“Yes, well…well,” Gabriel nearly stuttered his words trying to find a plausible lie, “it wasn’t Sandalphon who told me about the issue, it was…was… Uriel. Yes, Uriel.”  
“Uriel?” Michael frowned. “But how? She’s on Earth right now, checking on that mess in America.”  
“Checking?” Gabriel blinked. What was going on that Uriel had been sent to Earth.  
“I sent you a memo. Didn’t you read it?” Michael moved closer, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched.  
“I must have missed it. Busy with those Earth observation files, you know.” Gabriel grinned; he thought his face might crack.  
“You missed my memo but got a message from Uriel?” Michael hissed. “How could you get a message from Uriel? You don’t use a cell phone. You insist on using memos and letters and reports.”  
“Well,” Gabriel gulped, “the message must have come in at just the right time. The memo, rather. Yes, the memo came in at just the right time.”  
“The memo?” Michael backed away, crossing her arms over her chest. “Who wrote this memo from Uriel? I usually write it since I receive the inbound call.”  
Gabriel took a deep breath. “Someone else must have taken the call when you were busy I’m sure you’ve been busy this morning, what with everything going on with Earth and the Anti-Christ—by the way, have you been able to determine if he’s kept his powers or not?”  
“No.” Michael sniffed. “But we registered a surge of power near the small town of Tadfield early this morning. That’s probably what I was looking into when Uriel’s call came in.”  
“What?” Gabriel couldn’t control the rise in volume. “There was a power surge and no one told me? Whose incompetence do I blame this on?”  
Michael huffed and spun away, her heels clicking on the pristine tile. “You might want to find a mirror, Gabriel. There’s a memo about it on your desk.”


	26. The Beginning of the Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More kissing...only they aren't kids anymore. (Don't worry, it's PG-13).

It was well into evening and heading for the next morning when Aziraphale and Crowley reached London. They wouldn’t be even this far if they hadn’t accepted a lift from a lorry driver heading toward the docks with a load of wool being sent off somewhere by ship.

Aziraphale was tired and his feet ached—and he was hungry.

“I don’t even know if there is still food at the bookshop.” They were only a couple of blocks away from his home. He stopped, gabbing Crowley’s arm to stop him, too. “You don’t suppose they did something to my bookshop, do you?”

“Like what?” Crowley sighed.

“I don’t know. Vanish it? Sell it? Burn it down again?”

Crowley slung an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder and squeezed. “I doubt they did anything like that. They didn’t even bother giving us different backstories. This plot doesn’t seem to have been very deeply planned out.”

Nodding, taking in a shaky breath, Aziraphale started walking again, but his speed was greatly reduced. A part of him was afraid they’d show up and find it gone. What would he do without his bookshop?

He twisted his fingers; Crowley squeezed.

The arm around his shoulder helped ease the anxiety. It was nice, heavy and warm, comforting. He drifted closer to Crowley, and the demon adjusted so his arm fit better.

“And if they did do something to it, I’ll get it back for you. Don’t worry.”

But Aziraphale did; he always worried. It was as much a part of him as his blond curls and blue eyes.

They rounded the last corner in step, and there is was: A. Z. Fell and Co., Booksellers. The windows were dark and the blind were down, the closed sign hanging crooked in the door.

“Ah, Mr. Fell!” It was Mrs. Cheng, the old woman who ran the decent-tasting-food Chinese take-out a block over. “We were worried that you hadn’t opened your shop for a while. We’ve been asking around about you, to make sure all was well.”

‘We’ was the neighborhood business association. Mrs. Cheng was President of the association, probably looking for his quarterly dues.

“Oh, yes. I-I…”

Crowley leaned forward. “Had a bit of a family situation. Emergency type. Had to go take care of. Over now, though.” The demon smiled and winked behind his glasses.

The old woman smiled and nodded. “Ah, I see. Will you be opening tomorrow on schedule?”

“Um, yes, of course.” Aziraphale nodded and clenched his fingers together.

Mrs. Cheng drifted away, throwing the casual, “Don’t forget your dues,” over her shoulder.

Crowley watched the old woman, narrowing his gaze and reaching out as best he could with his malfunctioning power to make sure it was really the old woman and not a demon—like Hastur—in disguise. She was human, best he could tell.

“Everything okay there, Angel?” He slid his arm away, and it felt cold, the chill making him shiver.

“Yes.” Aziraphale opened the door with his key—it was good that Adam knew about the bookstore—and stepped inside, Crowley on his heels. “It doesn’t look like anyone has been in here since we…well, since we were de-aged.”

Dust covered everything.

Crowley snapped his fingers, and while little whirls of wind swept through, it didn’t clear the dust, only spread it through the air, making Aziraphale sneeze.

“Sorry. Forgot for a moment that isn’t working properly.”

“S’okay.” Aziraphale blew his nose with a delicate lace-trimmed handkerchief. “I was about to try the same thing.”

The demon suspected the hanky wasn’t just for the sneeze. Aziraphale looked exhausted and his eyes were tearing up again. “Come on, let’s check for something to eat and get some rest.”

They found box of water crackers and a sealed tin of paté, and when combined with a small bottle of bubbly, it satisfied their immediate hunger pangs.

From the chesterfield, Crowley observed his angel in the armchair. He was still twisting his fingers and biting his lip. Crowley didn’t like seeing him so anxious, especially when it had been dissipated long enough that he’d thought it might be gone for good. “Aziraphale, what are you worried about now? The bookshop is fine.”

The angel sighed, long and hard, and stared at Crowley. “What if they did something that we can’t get our powers back?”

Could they have? Crowley considered the situation. He’d say no, but if he’d been asked just after they’d stopped Armageddon if Beelzie would be able to come up with a scheme anything like this, he’d have laughed at them for even suggesting it.

“We’ll deal with that if that’s the case.” He patted the cushion next to him. “Come sit over here.”

“Why?”

“Angel, get over here.”

Aziraphale stood and stepped over to sit next to the demon. He was stiff and distant.

Crowley sighed and snaked his arm around the angel’s shoulder once more, pulling him into his side. “Close your eyes and try to sleep, eh? Tomorrow will be here soon enough. We’ll sort everything out then, okay?”

Nodding, Aziraphale rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder and the demon pulled him closer.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s voice was hushed.

“Yeah?”

“Can you…” The angel sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. It’s silly, really.”

“It’s probably not. Go ahead. What do you want me to do? I can’t miracle anything, remember?”

“I know.” Aziraphale turned his head to stare at Crowley, and the demon felt his cheeks flush. The angel licked his lips and Crowley, for a moment, forgot what they were talking about and even where they were. “Can you…kiss me? You know, like a goodnight kiss?”

Crowley blinked.

_Aziraphale wanted a kiss? _

He blinked again. He was taking too long to answer, and he knew it, but he felt frozen, turned to stone.

The angel dropped his gaze and turned away. “It’s okay. I know it’s a bit much to ask for.” He shifted away.

Crowley tightened his arm and pulled his angel close again, using the fingers of his other hand to stroke Aziraphale’s chin and turn his face back. “It’s not too much, I just short-circuited there for a moment.”

And Crowley dipped his head, settling his lips against Aziraphale’s. It was soft and gentle—not the kind of kiss Crowley wanted, but the kind that he knew Aziraphale needed. When their lips parted, he let his forehead rest against his angel’s temple, nuzzling his soft cheek.

“Thank you.” Aziraphale tucked his head into the crook of Crowley’s neck and shifted closer, curving his arm around Crowley’s waist to hug him.

His fingers stroked over Crowley’s side, and the demon had to grit his teeth to keep himself from moaning. “Angel, maybe-”

But Aziraphale lifted his face and kissed _him_. And this—THIS—was the kind of kiss Crowley wanted. Harder, faster, accompanied by fingers that gripped at his shirt, arms that held on.

Crowley couldn’t hold back his moan, and Aziraphale smiled against his mouth. The angel kissed him again, and again. Fingers feathered over the skin just beneath his shirt hem.

The demon wrapped his other arm around Aziraphale and sank back against the armrest, taking Aziraphale with him. “Angel?”

“Hmm?

“What are we doing?” Crowley knew what he wanted this to be, but Aziraphale had always held back, and he knew better than to push. He’d rather be Aziraphale’s friend for all eternity and more, than be cut out from his angel’s life.

That would devastate his soul.

Aziraphale raised his head and smiled, raising a hand to stroke a finger over Crowley’s cheek—a move that made the demon shiver from the heat that spread out from the touch. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

And the angel shifted, his leg sliding over Crowley’s to nestle, and kissed him again.


	27. The Beginning of the Resolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Hastur get into the picture...or at least my story.

Michael blinked at the message app on her phone: The words glimmered and melded, the letters twisting around themselves in a joyful dance.  
It was a message from God Herself.  
To Michael. Not to Gabriel, Her preferred messenger, but to Michael, the warrior.  
The archangel tapped the glittering icon and braced for the message. She didn’t expect it to be something good, not after the failed Armageddon and non-war. How could Heaven prove God was right and just without that war?  
It was not a reprimand. It was not a call for punishment. It was a message—but not one for Michael, not exactly.   
The message read:  
To be delivered promptly to the Principality Aziraphale: Well done on the accomplishment of your mission. Our arrangement is complete. You are now free to take your reward as you see fit. Happy travels!  
Another message appeared in the app’s inbox, it’s lettered a flaming red-gold that looked like they could burn if Michael opened the message.   
They didn’t dare ignore it, however, so they tapped the icon—a quick tap once only—to open and read it.  
To be delivered promptly to the demon Crowley: No need to be so gentle. Seraphims can handle a lot. Get a grip and go for it.   
Yet another message appeared in the inbox. Grimacing, Michael tapped the icon.  
This was not going to be a pleasant day, not at all.

Hastur lurked in a dark corner, watching Beelzebub chew on a bloody fingernail. The Lord of Hell looked worried. It was not a look they bore often, and it made Hastur, Duke of Hell, nervous.  
“Something wrong?” Hastur stepped out of the shadow.  
Beelzebub started on their throne, sharp teeth biting into the ragged flesh they’d been worrying, causing blood to ooze and drip. They waved the bleeding digit and narrowed their gaze at Hastur. “No. Why are you lurking about like that?”  
Hastur raised a brow. “I’m a demon. It’s what demons do.”  
Sniffing, sucking on their bleeding finger, Beelzebub glared. “Not in Hell they don’t.”  
Sneering, Hastur didn’t bother to reply. Of course, demons lurked in Hell. How else were they supposed to figure anything out? It’s wasn’t like Satan came out and held a press conference on a weekly basis to keep everyone up to date. The demons were lucky to get a memo once a decade, and a vague one at that.  
And it was up to the Lords and Dukes to interpret that memo and pass along word to every other demon of Hell. None of them were capable of reading the devil’s mind. If they were, fewer of them might have been pulled into the net of the fallen.  
“You look worried.” Hastur tried again. He really wanted to know what was going on. He knew something was up; Beelzebub rarely left their throne, and yet the last couple of months, they’d been gone more often than sitting on it.  
“There is nothing to worry about.” The short demon raised their chin and sneered back.   
Of course, there wasn’t. Hastur snickered and melted back into the shadows to drift away into the dark, dank halls that led away from the throne chamber.   
The irony of it was that if Beelzebub had just admitted to worrying, Hastur might have just delighted in it and gone on to poke at something else. But, not knowing was not something Hastur enjoyed, and without Ligur, he had no one to poke at when the desire to poke arose, so he needed a diversion.  
And he thought he’d found it.


	28. The Build-up to the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Messages delivered...

Crowley awoke first in the morning. It surprised him that he was awake as early as he was. He was prone to sleeping in and staying up late. Maybe it was the energy expended yesterday—and early this morning—that had sent him to such a sound sleep and let him wake early.

The demon stared at the angel resting next to him under the soft blue woolen blanket. Aziraphale’s cheeks were tinged pink, his blond curls tousled and damp at the temples.

It reminded Crowley of what they’d done.

One the one hand, he was overjoyed. He’d…they’d…he sighed and bent to place a soft kiss on his angel’s temple. He stroked his fingers though the damp curls, pressing them back so he could see Aziraphale’s face better.

The emotion that welled up inside him was not something a demon was supposed to feel, but he’d always felt it around Aziraphale. The feeling had grown over the centuries, but he’d never really thought about what it was until he’d thought he’d lost him…for good.

Darker thoughts crowded into his mind, dispelling the warm cocoon he’d been in. God would not be pleased, and though it didn’t matter to him, it would matter to Aziraphale. A lot. It would be everything.

Carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping angel, Crowley crept from the bed, snapped his fingers to get dressed, and was mildly surprised when the miracle worked without a hitch.

Down the hall, he stopped at the small kitchenette Aziraphale kept and started the kettle to make tea. The angel didn’t own a coffee maker, and Crowley wondered what he’d do without that first cup, but when the demon opened the cupboard to pull out the teapot, he found a French press—it looked new—next to it, along with a tin of quality Arabica beans already ground.

The blare of a trumpet made him jump, and he had to juggle to not drop the French press. Turning, he stared at Michael.

The archangel stood, robes so white they emitted their own light, taking a deep breath. “Since the Principality Aziraphale is still asleep—why does he sleep by the way? He doesn’t need to—I’ll deliver your message first.”

“Message?” Crowley blinked. Why the Hell would Heaven send him a message? “What’s going on?”

Michael sighed and rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I have to do this. I’d rather not, I hope you realize. But…God has commanded, and so I must obey.”

_Shit_, thought Crowley. He swallowed the hard lump growing in his throat, or tried to anyway, speaking around it when it stuck hard. “It’s a message from God?”

“I don’t deliver messages from Satan.” Michael almost snickered but coughed instead, covering her mouth with a slim, glitter-enhanced hand. “Anyway: God says, to the effect of, go for it, seraphims can handle a lot. Something like that, anyway. I hope you know what it means.”

“Huh? What?” Crowley dropped the French press and the glass shattered on the floor. “Oh, fuck!”

And a wide-eyed Michael took the opportunity to vanish.

Aziraphale jumped at the sound of breaking glass. Still abed, he blinked, trying to dispel the sleep from his lids. Looking around, he realized he was alone.

Or at least, Crowley wasn’t there.

Michael was. So, he wasn’t alone.

“Good morning, Michael. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Aziraphale pulled the sheets up to cover himself, smoothing them down to his sides.

“Good morning, and there is nothing pleasurable about this.” Michael averted her gaze, staring at the wall just over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I have a message.”

“A message? From Gabriel? He usually delivers those himself.” Aziraphale shifted, his puzzlement making him forget that he was naked beneath his sheets, and an archangel stood before him—one that probably would censure him about his form.

“Not from Gabriel.” Michael groaned. “Why did She have to send me? She usually gets Gabriel to do this kind of thing. Do you think She’s punishing me?”

Aziraphale was surprised at the fear he saw in Michael’s gaze, hear in the slight quaver in her tone. “Oh, I’m sure it’s not a punishment. Have you done something wrong?”

Michael reared back. “Of course not.”

“Then why would you think She was punishing you? Probably just didn’t trust Gabriel. He’s been a bit tetchy of late, what with Armageddon not happening and all.” Aziraphale thought about his and Crowley’s suspicions, but didn’t dare mention them to Michael. What if they were wrong? What if all of Heaven were in on it? He sighed and shook his head.

Michael frowned. “Aziraphale, we’ve all been a bit tetchy about that.”

Aziraphale raised his chin. “Yes, well-”

“Just be quiet, please, and let me get this over with.”

“Of course.”

Michael straightened and cleared her throat. “To the Principality Aziraphale, good job on the mission, arrangement complete, bon voyage. I think that’s what I’m supposed to say, or something like that.” The archangel shrugged.

Crowley stuck his head in the door. “You mean, you aren’t sure?”

“It’s not like I do this all the time. These types of messages usually go to Gabriel. I usually get the “prepare to be smited” messages, you know. The strong, bold ones.” Michael shrugged. “And it’s not like I’ve been sent down at all the last couple of millennia.”

“She has a point, Crowley, dear.” Aziraphale nodded.

“Oh,” the archangel raised her arms, “since you’re both here, I can finish this last one, too. To the Principality Aziraphale and the demon Crowley: It’s about time!”

And Michael vanished, leaving only a trail of Heavenly glow that seeped away after a moment.

Aziraphale stared at Crowley.

Crowley stared back.

“Oh,” the demon finally found the words he’d come to say, swallowing and shrugging, “Sorry, I broke your French press.”

And Aziraphale snapped his fingers; the tinkling sound of glass repairing itself could just be heard from the kitchen. The angel smiled. “All better now.”


	29. The Finale--it's a Happy Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley clear a few things up.

“That was odd.” Aziraphale drummed his fingers on the bedspread. “She never sends Michael with those kinds of messages.”

“That’s true.” Crowley stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, facing the angel. “There was a message for me, too.”

“What did yours say?”

“Something about seraphims being able to take a lot.”

“Seraphims?” Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Why would your message have anything to do with seraphim?” He slid his gaze away from the demon.

Aziraphale knew about seraphim, he knew an awful lot. He’d tried to forget. He wanted to, a part of him, anyway. There was also a part that wanted to remember. Because it was important to _remember_, even if it was so long ago, like a different life.

And in a way, it was. Things had been so different before there was war in Heaven. Back when he guarded the Lord, one of four—a seraphim.

Back before he heard the voice of an archangel, a sweet voice that asked questions to make you think, to reconsider, to wonder about things you weren’t supposed to wonder about.

It hurt, to remember, sometimes.

They’d spoken, softly, while that archangel had waited for his audience with God. Quiet conversations that had made Aziraphale ask his own questions. Had made him ask a favor of God Herself.

Heaven had rules—so many rules, too many rules—but seraphim had even more. Aziraphale had understood why those rules were there, and would never break them, so he’d asked a favor.

And God, in Her infinite wisdom, had granted it.

And Aziraphale had been happy, if only ever so briefly.

War had come to Heaven…and the fall…and chaos. He’d not been in Heaven for any of that; no, he’d been a Principality by then, guarding the eastern gate of Eden, guarding humanity.

And had no idea what had happened to the sweet-speaking archangel he’d almost fallen in love with.

“What are you thinking about?” Crowley’s finger touched Aziraphale’s cheek, jerking him back to the present.

He looked at the demon, saw the concern in those slitted, golden eyes. “Ancient history.”

“Ancient?” Crowley smiled and his fingers rubbed along Aziraphale’s jaw.

Shivering, the angel nodded. “Definitely. History so old, that it should long be forgotten.”

Crowley’s eyes grew more gold, the whites shrinking away. “Some things should always be remembered, angel.”

Like that voice, less frequently now, but so often in the past, would come to him, with those soft questions

The demon stared at his angel. He really should tell him. Who he was—or rather, who he’d been. But that angel—an archangel, no less, no more—whose questions had gotten Aziraphale in trouble, had gotten him reassigned so far from Heaven.

How could Aziraphale forgive him if he ever told him?

Blinking, Crowley shifted, letting his fingers drop away. He didn’t deserve any affection from his angel.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Crowley?”

“Hmm?”

“I was a seraphim, once.”

Crowley froze. He didn’t want this. If Aziraphale spoke of that time, he’d have to speak, too. And everything would change.

He’d lose his angel for good.

“Were you?” Crowley’s voice cracked.

Aziraphale shifted on the bed, patting the space next to him.

Crowley ignored the invitation. It would be too painful to sit next to him, to be that close and tell him.

The angel sighed and shrunk into the blankets, his fingers twisting into themselves. “It was so long ago, I don’t really like to think about it. I mean, I was happy for a long time, and then…I wasn’t. I wanted…more. So, I asked God for a favor.”

“A favor?” Crowley frowned and leaned toward his angel. “Why? What kind of favor?”

“Seraphim…well, seraphim aren’t allowed to have friends or relationships. To, well…know other angels. And…” his voice dropped to the barest whisper, “well, I wanted to know another angel.”

They fell silent a moment, Crowley watching Aziraphale stare at his hands. The demon reached out, untwisting the angel’s fingers to twine his own through them. “Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “There was an angel who visited the Lord, wanting to know so many whys about everything. He was never rude or disrespectful, not like when Lucifer would visit, stomping in like he had every right to disturb God. And…sometimes…” his voice grew wistful, “…sometimes, we’d get to talk while he waited.”

Crowley stopped breathing. It’s not like he needed to; demons didn’t need air. His body would get pale and it might faint, but he wouldn’t die. He’d just start breathing again, and his body would recover.

He forced a breath in and out again. “You wanted to know this angel?”

Nodding, Aziraphale sighed and wiped at a wetness gathering in his eyes. “Stupid human tears. Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten I’m an angel.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you forget.” Crowley swiped a finger at a drop that had made it all the way to Aziraphale’s chin.

Aziraphale took in a deep breath and nodded, chuckling. “You do like to remind me of that.”

Crowley grinned, trying to send out vibes of joy to the angel. It was hard, it wasn’t something demons usually did.

“Anyway,” the angel smiled—it was working and Crowley’s grin became real—and nodded, “I asked if I could be reassigned, so all those seraphim rules wouldn’t apply to me anymore.”

Gasping, Crowley jerked, his fingers tightening on the angel’s chin. “You asked to be reassigned?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale raised a hand to the demon’s fingers. “And She agreed, as long as I promised to always take care of the humans, to keep them safe, at all costs.”

“All costs?”

The angel laughed. “I don’t think She was really that upset over me giving my sword away. It did protect them, after all.”

“You could have gone with them.”

“No, I couldn’t. There was a rule that I couldn’t leave the gate—Her rule.” Aziraphale sighed and leaned his head into Crowley’s palm. “That She would have been upset about.”

“And this angel of yours?” The demon leaned close, setting his lips against Aziraphale’s cheek.

“Not mine. Never mine.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley, the blue in his eyes darkening. “I lost him in the fall, and I don’t know what happened to him. When I got the chance, and asked Gabriel, he only sneered and said he’d fallen. No matter who I asked, they couldn’t tell me where he was, or anything.”

“I know where he is.” Crowley moved his lips to Aziraphale’s ear.

The angel was quiet.

“Aziraphale, don’t you want to know where he is? What happened to him?” Crowley pulled back, stroking a thumb over the angel’s pale cheek. “Have you truly stopped asking that question?”

The angel looked away, staring at a rumpled bit of blanket.

“I have a favorite question. One I still ask. Do you want to know what it is?” Crowley tucked his fingers under Aziraphale’s chin and turned his face back up. He leaned close again, setting his lips to just barely touch the skin of Aziraphale’s neck, placing a gentle kiss there before whispering, “Why did She make angels?”

Aziraphale gasped and jerked, grabbing at Crowley’s shoulders. He blinked and swallowed. “That’s what…”

Crowley smiled and kissed his angel, pulling back to tell him, “Oh Aziraphale, I’m right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a little liberty with Aziraphale and Crowley, and what they were originally in Heaven. Popular fan theories abound about Crowley being the archangel Raphael, and those make sense to me, so that is hinted at here.  
There is not so much about Aziraphale, so I did a little research. He is just too nice, and I thought, what if he was made to guard? So, I did a little research.  
Seraphim are the protectors of God’s throne and represent God’s love. There are only four—and I’m saying there are now only three—as one, namely Aziraphale, asked to be reassigned. Cherubim are also protectors of God’s throne, but do not represent his love—which Aziraphale seems to do; he truly seems to love humanity as God asked all the angels to do—which would be why God approved the reassignment.   
That, and because She saw how he and Crowley felt about each other, and decided to play an intricate game of matchmaker—saving her precious humans at the same time.  
Just to be clear, these Seraphim are not the archangels—who are messengers of God—which can make sense for Crowley/Raphael. After all, even though it is a message of temptation, of how to gain knowledge, Crowley is sent with that temptation to the garden and is successful—Satan/Lucifer knew who he was. And that is why he isn’t a Duke or Lord of demons—Satan didn’t want the other demons to recognize the power Crowley has.  
Which would explain why Crowley, to give Adam time to stop the apocalypse, was able to stop all time—even for Satan and the archangels. This was not something Aziraphale could do, so it must be a special miracle, something only a powerful angel, like an archangel, could do.  
Anyway, below is the website I used to base this theory on.  
https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/The-Nine-Types-of-Angels


	30. That's a Wrap!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short, sweet, and we get to see a couple more characters, briefly.

For an angel and a demon who thought angels and demons should be able to fraternize, Aziraphale and Crowley were astonishingly good at meeting up without anyone—angel or demon or human—being any the wiser. After all, they’d had more than 6000 years of practice.

Today’s meet up was at a corner pub around the corner from the bookshop; it was nearly deserted. It was a cool afternoon, while everyone was at work or school or running errands. The only other folx in the pub were the barkeep—an older woman who smiled at them a lot—and a lone delivery man talking to the barkeep.

“I’ve been a lot of places to make my deliveries,” he tipped his glass up, toasting something invisible in front of him, “but I’ve never been to a delivery like that before. It was beautiful.”

He sobbed and downed his drink. “I’m a father!” His voice rang in the near-empty room.

“Congratulations.” The barkeep refilled his glass. “Children can be wonderful things.”

The delivery man nodded and drained his second glass. “Well, I’m off. Just wanted a quick nip before heading back to the hospital after my last delivery of the day.” He set a large tip on the counter.

Sauntering out, he waved at the only other inhabitants of the pub—two middle-aged men seemingly unaware of anything but each other.

The happy couple—an angel and a demon—sat in a corner booth, across from each other, leaning as close to the other as possible without actually touching.

And the barkeep smiled, thinking about long-term plans and short-term detours and future plans and how everything can fall in place with a little miracling. And She smiled and thought, “It is good.”

And it was.


End file.
